


Paradox Aeternum

by The Jingo (The_King_in_White)



Series: Ouroboros/Resonance [2]
Category: Highschool DxD, Naruto
Genre: F/F, F/M, Philosophy, Politics, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-01-17 16:26:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 20
Words: 61,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12369576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_King_in_White/pseuds/The%20Jingo
Summary: Summoned back across the void; Naruto and Sasuke must navigate the remnants of forgotten peace and a shattered Konoha. Only one thing is certain: "This place no longer feels like home."





	1. Chapter 1

Shifting golden sand sought the horizon, with curving dunes hollowed out by the wind as the breeze uplifted clouds of blazing grit to be lit up by the evening sun. To an unbiased bystander it was a sight that spoke of the majesty of nature and the inevitable breaking down of all things into the dust of creation.

Naruto didn't even register it, his azure gaze sightlessly staring into the distant landscape of Kaze no Kuni. He was too caught up in thoughts of blood tribute, burnt souls, and resurrections to worry about something like aesthetic beauty.

"Naruto."

The blond turned, his grimace sending the whisker birthmarks on his cheeks rippling with discontent. It was an uncommonly sour expression for the sunny young man, but given the events of the past hour it suited.

Grey sclera circled perpetual Sharingan, the red of Sasuke's eyes seeming darker and less brilliant than Naruto was used to. It suited the Uchiha in a depressing way, considering the faint cracks visible on porcelain skin and the faint but ever-present scent of grave dirt.

The sight only made Naruto even more bitter. "How could they just do this? Why couldn't they just…" Naruto trailed off, running a hand through his sunbright mane and scowling fiercely. "I wanted to come back, yeah, but not…"

"Not like this." Sasuke finished, the exhale intensifying the smell of death. As a reincarnated summon, the Uchiha didn't strictly need to breathe. But the habits of the living were hard to break. "What do you want to do?"

The implicit acknowledgement of authority actually made Naruto feel a bit better. Sakura and Gaara – who were aged and harder than he'd ever seen them – might have torn the two of them across worlds and out of the grave, but at least he had Sasuke at his back. "I don't know. Do you think we'll be able to get back sometime, or are we stuck like this?"

'Like this' meaning that they were a pair of travelers outside time, pulled back into a familiar place and an unfamiliar struggle with one walking among the living and one striding with the dead.

There were too many questions Naruto needed answers to, beginning with why they'd been resurrected by their teammate and what the hell she'd been thinking. Why call them after so long? Why not sooner, if they were so desperate?

"Hard to say. It depends on Ophis I suppose." Sasuke muttered, his bloodless lips drawing tight as he reflected on the Ouroboros Dragon. The Dragon God had brought them into the new world in the first place, and she seemed the one most able to pull them back out; but the last glimpse they'd had of her had been when she was bleeding and furious. Was Sakura so desperate she'd struggle with a god for the right to use them?

A faint note of unusual concern entered Sasuke's usually neutral voice. "There's nothing we can do about it now. Let's just go back in. Or did you need another minute?"

"No." Naruto denied, an unusual hardness filling his voice. "Let's go." Then the reborn jinchuuriki turned, stepping away from the desert sunlight and into the shadowed confines of the sub-baked hospital.

The undead shinobi followed the living, their connection thrumming strong despite the gulf of mortality. One might move with blood and breath while the other was filled with cinders and soil, but they were united by a tie stronger than death; twin vessels born out of chakra and forbidden sacrifice.

* * *

Ophis was ill pleased. She had rather carefully selected Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke as candidates for rebirth, and in migrating their souls she'd decided to bind their spirits to her own. Sasuke had been bound even closer, to the point where his essence had started to run into her own and become dependent on her existence.

So it was no shock that when those arrogant shinobi had managed to steal their souls back that it backlashed at her. The sudden frayed connection spanning universes had _hurt_ , and raised up other questions. She'd regretted it when she was forced to feel the Uchiha boy's emotions, but that had just been inconvenient. If some lowly mortals could strike out at her and make her _bleed_ through those children, then the connection wasn't simply troublesome. It was reckless and dangerous.

Sasuke and Naruto had become liabilities, and there were only two ways to solve the problem they now presented. The first was to simply cut her losses and leave them out to dry, and the second was to bind them so tightly to her that no amount of human sacrifice and summoning could tear them away.

"Well." Rias Gremory began, arms folding over her chest with a single finger tapping anxiously at her elbow. "That's a relief. However, that simply leads to more questions. If you're sustaining them here, then where did they go? And more importantly, how do you plan to get them back?"

Half-lidded grey eyes refocused on the impertinent mortal that seemed to have a death wish. The Gremory girl wasn't one of her soldiers, and she had nowhere near the power needed to survive anything more hefty than a backhand from Ophis. Her only point of value was her relation to Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke. A relation that she could, perhaps, make use of.

"They have returned to their universe of origin, summoned back by the shinobi to live in that world once more." The Dragon God shrugged one black silk clad shoulder. "As for duration, it is uncertain. Even for once such as I, transmigrating souls across realities is no simple thing. Doubly so if their souls have been bonded to that world rather than simply reborn in it."

Flicking up a hushing finger to quiet Akeno when the Thunder Priestess opened her mouth, Ophis never allowed her passionless gaze to waver. "In the meantime, there is another problem you must attend to. At the best of speeds, the return of their souls will not be immediate. Yet Naruto Gremory is well known enough that he must be seen. His disappearance will not pass unremarked for long, so someone else must pretend to be him and give the image of health. Preferably you, Rias Gremory, because of your near blood relation. No one else would mimic his mannerisms and abilities as well."

Truthfully speaking, Ophis did not care about the lives of the mortals crowded in the room. They were mere window dressing compared to the potential she'd seen in Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke. But regardless of her preferences they had a common interest, so Ophis turned her mind to the situation at hand with unbounded eons of wily old cunning.

If she needed to deal with these children, then the least she could do was make sure that without a doubt she owned them.

A bright red eyebrow arched. "And how to you suggest we do that? Illusion magic can only do so much, and considering the magical skill of the nobility at large that Naruto needs to be seen by, it would be discovered sooner or later." Rias was suspicious of the Ouroboros Dragon. Ophis made too much of a habit of breezing in and out of their lives like a hurricane, caring nothing for the destruction she left behind. Why _now_ was she suddenly deciding to be helpful?

Ophis' gaze turned bright and cold, with the lolita holding out a hand and gathering dark power in a flex of sorcery. Black scales shimmered like heavy oil under the sunlight, refracting into a faint rainbow of slick colours and shimmering patterns. "Well, _that_ is not such a difficult task. All I need you to do is open wide, girl."

The air filled with the sibilant hissing of a great serpent.

* * *

A faint crackle rumbled through his chest every time Sasuke made his undead body breathe in. It was barely noticeable compared to the horrifying colour of his sclera or the thin fissures that marred his clay face, but when he stood silently vigilant behind Naruto's shoulder the Uchiha couldn't help but hear it.

Breathe in.

Fragile bone cracked as ribs shifted to accommodate the expansion of undead lungs, the shift of cartilage grinding gruesomely.

Breathe out.

Paper rustled as the jutsu that animated his dead body worked to heal the microfractures and restore him to the pristine peace of the grave.

"I want to know everything – and I mean _everything_." Naruto bit out, azure eyes blazing. There was a level of command in his voice that had been absent the first time he'd died, and its sudden appearance made Gaara and Sakura raise their eyebrows.

Gaara's mismatched gaze - one eye teal green and the other the rippling violet of Sasuke's Rinnegan – flickered towards the dust covered surface of the conference room table. Like much of the hospital, it was pitted with the marks of long use and had a dubious remaining lifespan. "Have a seat." The Kazekage invited in a gravelly voice, syllables rasping as if he'd once had his vocal chords cut.

Considering the dark ropy mass of scar tissue curving around the front of his neck, that probably wasn't so far from the truth.

Without hesitation Naruto grabbed hold of a rickety office chair, ignoring the squeaks as he wheeled the piece of cracked leather furniture about to plop down on. Maybe it was maturity or perhaps it was simply the result of years of training as a Gehennan noble, but he had no urge to bounce around the room screaming like he would have in his first life. He was more contained than _that_.

Sasuke chose to remain standing, undead flesh hard and tireless. He had no need to rest, and no desire to start exchanging pleasantries like it was a damn tea party.

"I don't wanna beat around the bush." Naruto decided harshly, thinning his lips. Maybe if circumstances were different he'd have been glad to see his old friends again, but his plan to revisit Konoha had never included what was basically a heart attack followed by waking up in a new body _again_. "It's obvious you guys decided to revive us. _Why_?"

Chewing one ragged thumbnail, Sakura examined her two resurrected teammates with a faint light of nostalgia in emerald green orbs. "Seventeen years ago you both died." She prefaced quietly, pulling her thumb away from her teeth and settling her folded hands on the table. "Five years after that, Kumo and Iwa declared the Fifth Shinobi World War."

Sasuke blinked when Naruto jerked back in surprise. Was it really that odd? The Third Shinobi World War might have ended in a victory for Konoha against the combined forced of Iwa, Kumo and Kiri. Relations with Kiri had eventually normalized, but Konoha's relationship with Kumo and Iwa had always been contentious. Even temporarily allying for the war against Obito wouldn't have entirely soothed all tensions. If Konoha was going to fight anyone, those countries would be the most likely opponents.

Gaara exhaled when it became obvious that Sakura had lost herself in her own train of memories. Settling a hand over the woman's pink locks, the grizzled Kazekage boldly offered Naruto a challenging stare. "Two years after that Konoha was destroyed, leaving its people a scattered remnant that took refuge in Suna or Kiri. Since then we've been deadlocked in a constant war with the Iwa-Kumo alliance."

That declaration hit Naruto like a mule's kick to the chest. Swallowing dryly, the blond reached up to rub at his neck in an effort to force back the burn of bile. What the _hell_? He'd known it had to be bad or they wouldn't have resurrected him, but Konoha was just _gone_? "Well I fucking hope you brought us back here to fix all this shit."

"It was Kakashi's last decision as Rokudaime Hokage to revive the two of you." Sakura sighed. "We needed your strength, so we brought you back with the Edo Tensei. But we needed the _real_ Naruto too, rather than just his power, so sensei used the Rinnegan to fully revive him."

" _My_ Rinnegan." Sasuke said coolly, studying with eye implanted in Gaara's left socket with a narrowed gaze. It might make him a hypocrite considering how he himself had basically pillaged Itachi's corpse to obtain a new set of eyes and stave off blindness, but their willingness to desecrate his body galled him.

Sakura hesitated a brief moment before giving a sharp nod. "That's right." She was well aware that Sasuke would have a negative opinion of her decision – she'd known that when she first extracted his eyes decades ago – but she still stood by that choice. It had been necessary for the good of Konoha.

Demand sharpened Sasuke's voice until it seemed every word would draw blood. "Where's the rest of my body then?"

Caution made Sakura's words slow and measured, with the war weary expression on her weathered features deepening. She looked like she was sixty years old, rather than her true age of nearly forty. "The rest of your body except for your eyes was destroyed a long time ago, on Kakashi's orders. We didn't want other countries playing pirate with your body for your power after you died. The left eye is as you see." She motioned vaguely towards Gaara. "While the right eye became the genetic basis for your Edo Tensei summoning."

Sasuke's first instinct was to offer up a blisteringly sarcastic reply. It was okay for Konoha to hoard his power for itself, but it was a crime if any of the other village wanted to do the same? It was just another prime example of the duplicity that had driven him to decide that revolution of the system was necessarily in his first life.

But Sasuke's first instinct was only his old bitterness rising up, and he'd vowed years ago to try and leave the storm of rage and revenge behind him; so instead he bit through his unfeeling tongue and fell silent. At least they hadn't started pumping his corpse for sperm or trying to graft his genetics into infants like the experiment Orochimaru had once conducted with Hashirama's cells.

In the end, Sasuke had committed too many crimes for power in his day that he couldn't really point fingers at anyone else.

"Damn it, Sakura!" Naruto finally exploded, raking a hand through his golden mane with his face twisted into a rictus of despair and fury. "What the hell went wrong? We all came together to fight against Madara, and when it was all over we were comrades. The world I left behind was on the path to peace, not the road to genocide!"

"The weakness of humanity to their own fear and hunger." Gaara murmured, folding his arms over his chest and seeming to age a hundred years in a blink. "When the villages committed to peace, we agreed to strive for a world without violence. Shinobi weren't going to be hired thieves and murderers anymore. But without those missions going into our pockets, the shinobi villages entered economic decline. Protection missions also dried up, as many shinobi were only employed as guardians against other shinobi. If we weren't killing, we didn't need to be guarded against after all. Some found employment in other fields of work, but for many trying to adapt was hard… too hard."

Sakura tilted her head in agreement. "Shinobi were trained to be warriors and spies, not farmers or glassblowers. It was the only lifestyle they knew, and when things got tough they fell back on it. We started taking on assassination and espionage missions again, and the economy improved. The ideal of peace was forgotten when it was war that put food on the table, and with you and Sasuke dead everyone suddenly remembered how weak Konoha actually was. The Kyuubi did us no favours, Orochimaru just compounded the issue, and Pein nearly destroyed us."

A bitter chuckle burst from Sasuke's mouth; the Uchiha shaking his head ruefully with a rustle of long dark hair. "Naruto and I fought that last time to decide the future, and in the end we agreed to move forward with the idea that peace could be built on bonds and mutual understanding. But everyone only agreed to peace out of fear of our power. That's…"

The slap of Naruto's palm on the tabletop was deafening, cutting off Sasuke's rumination with an echoing clap. " _No_." the jinchuuriki decided, lurching to his feet with a flash of blue fire in his eyes. "I'm _not_ going to accept that. We weren't wrong the first time, Sasuke. Peace though understanding _is_ possible."

A curled fist thumped against Naruto's thigh as the blond glowered in frustration. "I didn't want to be reborn this way, but I'm here now, and I'm going to figure out what went wrong and _fix it_. That's my promise for _this_ lifetime, and I never go back on my word!"

The pinched look on Sakura's face relaxed into gentle nostalgia and exasperated fondness. "That's the knucklehead I remember."

"Sasuke." Turning on the spot, the Uzumaki fixed a sharp stare on his undead friend. There was no frivolity pulling at his whiskered cheeks or humor gleaming in his gaze. The only thing that could be found was burning resolve and diamond determination. It was the gaze of the king. "Will you help me?"

And there _he_ was, Sasuke realized. Naruto's second life had taught him to be polished like a son of the nobility, but it had also stolen the magnetic gravitas that had enabled a blond orphan to change the world. Perhaps it was being in his old body that did it, or possibly it was finally taking up a goal he cared passionately for, but that certain spark was back.

A smile curved gravedirt lips. "Moron... do you even have to ask?" Sasuke would be standing there next to him; right to the very end.


	2. Chapter 2

Naruto wrapped his worn tan headscarf tighter around his face, covering everything up to the eyes in an effort to keep the blowing sand of the desert out of his mouth. Sweat stung the corner of his vision; brought out by the blaze of the sun despite the late hour of the day.

" **I still think you should have just used Tailed Beast Mode. Scurrying around like rats is beneath us."**

"Settle down, Kurama." The blond muttered, bracing his knees when a strong gust of wind pulled at their travelling party. "This way is smarter and you know it."

" **Tch."**

When he'd been a kid Naruto never would have let himself travel anywhere so covered up. Everything he did had been about getting noticed.

But he was much older and wiser now. They had to stay below the radar if they didn't want his and Sasuke's return to be blabbed about from one end of the continent to the other. Secrecy was important, so he hadn't kicked up a fuss about taking the longer route to Sunagakure.

If they were discovered before they'd had a chance to come up with a good plan, there was no telling how the other villages would react. Twenty years dead had probably dented his reputation, so the younger generation of ninja from Kumo or Iwa might think his story was just a bunch of puffed up bullshit and do nothing about it. Or they could panic and escalate from the current stalemate into total war.

In the end, they had to play their cards right to prevent more death. Naruto wasn't dumb or selfish enough to value pride over human lives.

"Sakura." The blond coughed when the wind finally died down, falling into step beside his aged squadmate. "What happened to everyone else? You and Gaara are right here obviously, and Kaka-sensei…" Naruto trailed off, biting the inside of his cheek until he drew blood.

Damn his stubborn old teacher! He would have been fine just being an Edo Tensei summon like Sasuke, so there was no reason for Kakashi to just go and _die_ like that. But Kakashi had always gone the extra mile for his team. It was part of what Naruto admired about his first sensei.

Glittering emerald orbs shifted from the distant sand dunes to peer at the reborn jinchuuriki.

Sakura blinked the grit from her eyes, barely feeling the pain after her years of get used to the arid clime. It was nothing compared to the agony in her chest. "Hinata committed suicide a few months after we found you dead. Tenten and Sai died during the invasion that destroyed Konoha. The rest of us made it out, but not in one piece. Kiba lost his legs and Lee's blind."

Each name was like a fresh dagger to Naruto's already aching heart. He'd never _wanted_ to die, but knowing just how badly his absence had affected his friends and his village made him wish more desperately than ever before that he hadn't. If he hadn't let himself go that one night at the bar all those years ago, so many things would be different.

"What else?"

"Shikamaru and Temari got married half a year after you died, but they got divorced a couple of years ago and he's with Ino now. Chouji and Kankuro have an _understanding_. Shino turned into a bit of a playboy, but everyone knows he's the father of Kurenai-sensei's second kid." Sakura rattled off in a crisp tone. "Gaara and I married for politics, right after the Exile."

Naruto was glad for the tidbits of gossip that helped distract him from thinking about how so many of his friends were dead or crippled. "Kurenai-sensei and Shino? That's…" he shuddered dramatically.

"What about Taka?" Sasuke spoke up for the first time in hours, his uncovered hair rustling in the breeze. Unlike the rest of their small party, the undead warrior made no concession to the heat and breeze he couldn't feel. "And Orochimaru?"

The Uchiha asking after his old team and sensei wasn't entirely unexpected, but the quiet scoff that Sakura gave off let Naruto know that even after all these years the pink-haired woman was still holding a bit of a grudge. She blamed them, and Orochimaru especially; for leading Sasuke away from Team Seven.

Naruto himself had forgiven Orochimaru a long time ago, but that didn't mean he liked the man either. A creep was still a creep, no matter which team he was playing for.

"Suigetsu went back to Kiri and reformed the Seven Swordsmen. He's now ranked pretty high in their government and is one of our closest allies. Juugo died when Kumo rolled right over Oto at the start of the war. Orochimaru was taken prisoner by Iwa, but our spies say he's still not talking. Kabuto is one of our most skilled Iryu-nin, in case you were wondering."

The absence of a particular name stuck out. "And Karin?" Sasuke prodded, his voice coloured by only a cool sort of disinterest.

If Naruto hadn't known already, he never would have guessed his friend had taken his distant relative as a lover once upon a time. It made him question just how much emotion there actually had been in that affair.

Sakura's eyes crinkled with an anguish and pity. "Karin was captured by Kumo during the fall of Konoha. They took her back to their village and put her in one of their bloodline breeding programs. When she got pregnant she sabotaged the electric system of the house they were keeping her in. In the end, she burnt herself to death. It kept them from using any of her DNA after she passed on."

"I see." Sasuke sighed raggedly, running a hand over the back of his head in a stress-relieving gesture.

There was no reaction to the death and imprisonment of several of his old comrades beyond that, and Naruto wondered if it was because Sasuke was simply used to people he'd formed bonds with dying brutally. The thought was profoundly sad.

"We're almost there." Gaara cut in, tossing a look over his shoulder as he interrupted the depressing conversation. "Keep those scarves up – and that includes _you_ , Sasuke. Even twenty years later you're still recognizable, and we don't need word about you two getting out quite yet."

Clicking his tongue at the Kazekage's order, Sasuke pulled the balled-up headscarf from his pocket and swiftly wrapped its concealing folds around his hair and face. "Let's just get this over with."

* * *

Rias woke with a bitter aftertaste in her mouth and a heavy throbbing ache between her eyes.

"Good, you're awake." Akeno's exhausted voice greeted her, and a soft warm hand slithered underneath Rias' shoulders to help the redhead into a sitting position.

Wincing at the stiff pull of muscles in her neck, Rias turned her attention to her Queen and stopped short in shock.

Akeno looked _awful_ , with heavy dark bags beneath her eyes and thick bloodshot lines all through her white sclera. The skin of her face was greyed with bone deep fatigue, and even more concerningly her pink lips had tinged to an unhealthy blue.

"What _happened_?" Rias demanded in dismay. "How long was I out?"

Blinking in confusion, Akeno tilted her head. "Only a few hours, why?"

"A few hours?" The disbelief was think in Rias' strident tones. "But you look like…" she trailed off, not quite sure how to say it without sounding outright insulting. But it seemed like her hesitation was for naught, as Akeno suddenly just looked very amused.

"Like death warmed over?" Akeno chuckled roughly, stepping back away from the bed to give her mistress more space. "That's so cruel of you to say, Rias-tan."

Rias snorted at the teasing, relieved _that_ at least that was the same and rolling to her feet in a single smooth motion. Patting at her tangled mane in an attempt to restore some order to the mussed strands, she smirked. "If you have enough energy to act the fool, then you'll be alright. Now, what happened with Ophis?"

Pouting just a bit, Akeno waved her hand about airily. "After she fed us our reptile supplement she said she would be in touch, and then she went kapoof."

Rias frowned at that. "What do you mean _us_?" A niggling suspicion burbled up in her gut, and Rias hoped she was wrong. She had decided to take on the risk of venom alone, and she hadn't wanted the rest of her peerage to come gambling along with her. It was stupid and unnecessary.

Scratching the side of her nose sheepishly, Akeno let her violet gaze track off to the side to avoid meeting the redhead's piercing teal stare. "Well, once you had the snake stuffed down your throat Yuuto raised a good point. You and Naruto are practically brother and sister, and it would be strange if you weren't seen together. So if you're pretending to be Naruto, then someone has to pretend to be _you_ , and we all agreed that I was the best choice. And then Ophis made it happen."

"Idiots, all of you!" Rias exploded, clapping a hand to her forehead and giving an exasperated groan. The Ruin Princess had no words to describe just how _thoughtless_ they were rushing ahead like that without even asking for her opinion. Soul binding magic was complex and _dangerous_.

It was bad enough that one of their little family had to take the risk of switching between bodies to keep Naruto's absence and past life a secret, but playing a game of musical chairs with possession was just asking for trouble. "You're being too reckless!"

Akeno gave her best friend a chilly glare. "And who exactly decided you're the only one that is allowed to take risks, Rias? Because the last time I checked, we were all treating each other as equals. You and Naruto might be nobility by birth, but we're your _friends_ , not your slaves. And if we want to stick our necks out for you, we will. That's what love is about in the first place."

The rebuke came like a slap to the face, driving Rias to recoil with a jaw clenched in indignation. Maybe it wasn't some rule they'd explicitly laid out, but the redhead thought it was pretty clearly implied. The older members of her peerage took care of the younger ones, and the strong defended the weak.

Rias was the second oldest and the strongest in their little family, with the protection and resources of the nobility on top of it. Out of all of them, she was the most qualified to take risks and make decisions. For anyone that wasn't Sasuke to step up and throw themselves in danger alongside her without so much as a 'by-your-leave' felt bizarre and disorienting.

Then again, maybe she should have expected it. Having lost her family once and spending years on the run made Akeno even more reckless than Rias herself could be. A few years of stability wouldn't tame the underlying insecurity.

So rather than throw down the gauntlet over Akeno's choice, Rias just screwed on a blandly polite smile instead. "Well, I suppose it's too late to do anything about it now." If she couldn't change things, Rias would just work with them as they were.

She was good at that.

* * *

The moon was high in the sky, hanging fat and pale like a swollen melon by the time they slipped into the backstreets of Sunagakure. More than one patrolling guard had flitted by overhead to inspect their party, but they always cleared out once Gaara made a wiggling motion with his left hand.

Naruto couldn't help but find it amusing. Secret handshakes and code words? Maybe the whole Kage game was much less serious than he'd always thought it was, and much more like a bunch of kids playing in their secret base? The Konohamaru Corps would have pissed themselves with glee back in the day if they knew.

" **I don't think you're one to talk. All you ever did was whine on and on about being the Hokage."**

" _Shut it, furball."_

Knuckling the sand out of one eye, Naruto dogged Sakura's footsteps as she led him to one of the many squat homesteads that populated Suna. It looked exactly like the dozen houses they'd already passed, and if not for the swelling sensation of chakra at the edge of his still rusty senses Naruto wouldn't have thought it was any different from the rest.

Sakura coughed dryly, knocking on the door twice, then five times, then once, and then finally eight times. "Hurry it up, Kazui-kun!" She harangued in a rolling tone better suited to a peasant fishwife than the Nanadaime Hokage. "The dango is getting cold!"

"Troublesome bitch." A baritone voice rumbled from the other side of the door, vaguely familiar and accompanied by the sound of a lock clicking open. "I knew I should have told your parents to piss off with the whole marriage idea."

"Oh sure, _I'm_ the problem." Sakura snapped as the door cracked open, turning to usher in her followers without missing a beat in her contrived ranting. "It's not that you smoke too much or that you drink too much, oh no. It's all me."

Naruto slipped through the thin opening, squinting his eyes as they were plunged into complete darkness. The only thing he could see was Sasuke's faintly burning Sharingan hovering in pitch black.

And then with the stink of burning pitch orange light flared. "About time you got here." Shikamaru muttered, angry red scars curving across the planes of his face as he harshly studied the two resurrected shinobi. "I expected you three hours ago."

"There were complications with the Edo Tensei." Gaara replied frostily, shucking off his cloak before squarely meeting his ex-brother-in-law's dark eyes. "We needed more sacrifices to bind their souls than we expected, and ended up burning through every volunteer before we managed to take hold of them."

"Tch." The Nara grunted, holding his torch aloft to better considering Naruto's lively flush and the grey pallor of Sasuke's undead flesh. "Well, at least it was worth it."

" _Sacrifices_?" Naruto questioned lowly, with a particular edge to his words that only came from slow-building fury. Both he and Sasuke were intimately aware of what price had to be paid to use Edo Tensei or Rinne Tensei: at least one life for each jutsu. But Gaara's words fairly clearly suggested they'd needed more than that. "How many people, _exactly_ , died to bring us back here?"

"One hundred each." Sakura broke in clinically, flicking the lock shut with calloused fingers before grabbing the torch from Shikamaru's lazy grip and plodding through the hallways of the empty home.

Left with no choice but to follow if he was going to get answers, Naruto clenched his jaw and stomped after the pink haired woman.

More and more the blond was questioning what the _fuck_ had happened to everyone. He'd died and had faith that his friends would at least be able to carry on his dream. Instead he came back to discover they were all dabbling in murder and human sacrifice.

They descended a vast spiraling staircase, tunneling deep into the earth until all sounds of the world above had faded away and the only sound was Naruto's thrumming pulse in his ears. "Hey, are we almost there?" he prodded, breaking the silence with a huff.

"Almost." Gaara answered, abruptly turning in place and feeling along the bricked walls of the stairwell. Nimble fingers slid into recessed caches, and the redhead shoved forward, pushing a hidden door inward on its hinges.

Coughing at the stale air, Naruto waved the dust away and moved into a great chamber bathed in golden light and filled with the scent of wax candles.

"Yo, Naruto."

A grin split the jinchuuriki's lips, and for the first time in hours he felt something like steady ground underneath his feet. "Wassup, dogbreath?" he shot back, a teasing twinkle in his eye as he set his gaze on Kiba.

The Inuzuka clan head had let himself go in the decades since they'd last seen each other. What used to be a tightly muscled abdomen had grown into a meaty belly, pushing against the roughspun cotton of Kiba's tunic and jiggling when the man patted at his great stomach. Really, the only thing that was the same was the shaggy hair and the thick red tattoos marking his flabby face. "Just waiting for you to lounge your wussy ass in here foxboy."

Naruto refused to look away from the stumps of Kiba's legs, rounded at the knee and covered up with rolls of cloth and blankets. It would demean his old bar buddy if he started treating the man like a freakshow cripple. So even if it made his heart ache in his chest, Naruto was determined not to react to it. "Well, better late than never, ne?"

The fanged grin on Kiba's face twisted. "Yeah." He replied, a brittle sound to his booming voice.

"So, who all else is here?" Naruto questioned with a practiced smirk, azure gaze shifting from one face to the next. Shino he had expected, and Chouji's stern face; but the heavily pregnant Ino was a bit of a shock. "Fuck, you look like you're about to pop!"

Sakura slapped the blond across the back of the head, near two decades later but with all the familiar reflex of yesterday. " _Naruto_." The Hokage groaned, shaking out her hand and glaring half-heartedly at her wincing squadmate.

Barking a sharp laugh, Ino cradled a protective hand over her belly and eyed Naruto with an expression of nostalgic fondness. "I see you haven't changed." She mused, cocking a pale eyebrow when Sasuke huffed. "And neither did you, Sasuke-kun."

The smile Naruto offered the hodgepodge collection of his old friends was only a little strained. Sure, there seemed to be too many faces missing. And sure, the ones that were there were all marred by war scars and old despair, but they were _still_ his old comrades. If he turned away from them now just because they'd had a few tragedies or because they were a little weathered, he couldn't claim to be Uzumaki Naruto.

"So, what's the plan?"


	3. Chapter 3

Inhaling a lungful of smoke, Shikamaru pursed his lips around the stub of his cigarette and bent over the pitted table that Sakura had spread a yellowed map over. "We're thinking that we can smash their lines here and _here_."

The Nara traced curving lines that advanced from Suna's hinterland; deep into the Land of Fire. "We want to move fast and hard, and reoccupy Konoha by the third day. At that point, the element of surprise will be gone."

Naruto studied the shaded areas of the map representing lost territory with a frown. Objectively he'd know it had to be bad, but it was different when he actually could _see_ how much of his homeland had been lost. Only a shallow crescent along the southern shoreline between Kaze no Kuni and Mizu no Kuni was still in the hands of Konoha-nin.

"Sasuke and I should split up then." Naruto decided, glancing at the Uchiha for any traces of disagreement. "I don't want to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm pretty sure they don't have anyone hanging around that could take either one of us. So it'll move faster if we each take a half."

"Tch, fine." Sasuke grunted, folding his arms over his chest with a faint creak of splitting gravedirt flesh.

The sound brought a disgusted grimace to Kiba's face, and the shaggy haired man made a quiet attempt to wheel away.

Shikamaru blinked in bemusement. "That's what I would've suggested." He demurred. Maybe twenty years had passed and made his memory a bit foggy, but he was pretty sure that the Naruto who'd died hadn't even been _that_ tactically aware. Did the jinchuuriki mature in the afterlife, or was there some other factor at play transforming him from a living wrecking ball to a somewhat competent strategist?

"Look." Naruto huffed, stepping closer to the table and gently nudging Sakura out of the way. "If we follow the road system we're going to run into a few choke points. Nothing we can't handle." He reassured the room at large without removing his sharp gaze from the yellowed map. "But you might want to take the time to _really_ occupy them so you can use them as supply lines to Konoha. It would stretch it out to four days, but we'd be better off."

"I agree." Sasuke offered, speaking up to contribute for the first time since the discussion began. Compared to Naruto he was much less enthusiastic about getting involved with the reconquest of Konoha, and it showed in his silence. "You don't have a guarantee on how long the war will run, and they have significantly more resources than you do. Give them time to retreat and fortify your lines. If you try to force them into battles of annihilation you'll make them desperate and run up the casualties on both sides."

Holding his palm up to forestall any further debate, Gaara offered his support. "We'll go with Naruto's plan. Our alliance doesn't have the numbers theirs does, and because we've kept Naruto's return and this invasion a secret we won't have reinforcements from our allies. We don't have the manpower to sustain heavy losses, so we need to focus on preserving our armies while achieving strategic objectives."

"So there's no reason to go crazy about it and try to kill as many people as possible." Naruto mumbled, shrugging off the sharp look his comment drew from Sakura.

He didn't give a damn if it was an unpopular opinion. Naruto understood the hunger for vengeance that his friends had, but that didn't mean he was going to support it. Sasuke had caused enough trouble with _that_ particular urge the first time, and he had only been one guy. An entire village crazed for revenge would be an utter clusterfuck. The only way to build peace in the long run was to break the chain of hatred and step forward into the future together.

There was no point to taking back Konoha if it just led to more conflict and more killing. They needed open dialogue and a new system that would deal with the problems they'd had the first time they tried to build a world without war.

Thankfully, he had come up with a plan as soon as Sakura started talking about invasions. Taking back their homeland would be enough to show the world that he was really back and that the Southern Alliance had some actual bite.

At that point, Naruto just needed to get everyone around the table to hash out the peace details. It would be easy enough to get started, even if all the treaty haggling and paper pushing would make him want to dig his own eyes out with rusty spoons.

* * *

If there was one thing about Naruto that Sasuke had learned over the years, it was that his friend never knew when to quit and take a breather. The indomitable fire in the belly that Naruto possessed had led the man to some of his greatest victories, but it also made him neglect his own wellbeing when the pressure mounted.

So when Naruto's hands started faintly trembling, Sasuke knew he had to step in before the blond ran himself into the ground.

"Stop wasting time." The Uchiha declared, shifting his dim red gaze from one tired shinobi to the next. Exhaustion stamped itself into their faces with wrinkles and dark bags; the hours long discussion taking its toll after having continued through the night and into the early morning. "You've already decided on your deployments. Now you're just talking in circles."

Sakura clicked her tongue irritably setting one hand on her hip as she glared at her ex-squadmate. The lack of slavish adoration in her eyes still shocked Sasuke from time to time, but he supposed that two decades of warfare would change even that.

"Fine. Everyone head home and get some rest. We'll be moving at the end of the week. Until then, no one say anything about Naruto or Sasuke. If word gets out it'll be catastrophic for our plans."

A chorus of agreements escaped the crowd as they shuffled away in a fatigued mass, leaving the resurrected shinobi alone with the two Kage.

"We need to get back to the office as well." Gaara explained, mismatched gaze soft and wistful as he spoke to Naruto. "We'd like it if you two remained here. I understand the accommodations aren't ideal, but as Sakura said we can't afford to have word of your presence getting out quite yet. Until then Shikamaru will look after you. There are a couple of spare rooms here for you to use."

Glancing towards the short hallway tunneled into the back corner of the conference room, Naruto gave an exasperated sigh and nodded. "Fine, fine. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do." He didn't want to spend the next few days hiding in what was basically a cave, but it seemed he didn't have much of a choice.

After exchanging goodbyes with the blond and the taciturn Uchiha, the two Kages departed, leaving them alone for the first time in nearly twenty hours.

Naruto made it half a minute before exhaling all his breath in a ragged whoosh, sagging down and steadying himself against the nicked roundtable. "What the _fuck_." He cursed as anger mingled with despair. "I knew it was bad after they gave us the rundown, but to actually _see_ them…"

All the emotions in Naruto's chest tangled up into a wretched ball that seemed to stick in his throat, choking out every breath he tried to take and making his head swim.

Near two decades in another world had dulled the pain of losing all his bonds and the life he'd built for himself. With difficulty, Naruto had come to terms with it all. A quick peek at a happy and safe Konoha was all he would have asked for, and he'd have been able to close the cover on his old life entirely.

Instead Naruto woke up and was forced to come face to face with the living ashes of his dreams, seeing the devastation marked in scars and the conspicuous absence of deceased comrades. He was surrounded by familiar strangers, and could only hope that if he managed to do it _right_ this time that he'd feel less like an interloper and more like he'd actually come home.

"Uzumaki Naruto."

Jerkin violently as he was torn from his spiraling thoughts, Naruto flipped the table and turned on the spot with a livid expression. "Don't _do_ that. _Fuck_ , what's wrong with you?"

Ophis blinked, tilting her head at the worn out jinchuuriki before glancing at Sasuke's amused smirk. "I felt speaking to you directly as soon as your human compatriots departed was ideal, since there is no need for them to know about me. Do you disagree?"

"Now I just know that you're pulling my leg." Naruto grumbled, shoving aside all the memories of Kiba's broken body and Lee's broken mind to focus solely on the Ouroboros Dragon. As long as he had something else to fixate on he didn't need to think about how his fingers were shaking in his pockets or the nauseous burn in his throat. "But fine, what's happening over there?"

Frowning at the mortal's demanding tone, Ophis primly dusted off her shoulder before settling her glittering grey stare on the whiskers adorning Naruto's cheeks. "I have contracted Rias Gremory to possess your body and act as a suitable substitute for you during your stay here. When you return your position in society will be undisturbed. The circumstances are not ideal, but I will facilitate your travels regardless, as per our agreement."

"Possession is a dangerous spell." Sasuke pointed out with a thin veneer of mildness over aggression. One word might be enough to move him to violence or sooth his protective temper.

"I will sustain her existence the same way I've sustained yours." Leaving Sasuke to mull over that bland reassurance, Ophis directed her next words at Naruto. "Since I suspect you would prefer to handle the situation here without my interference, I will leave it in your hands. Expect my return with a method of communication in the coming days."

And then Ophis vanished in a puff of oily mist.

"Bitch." Naruto muttered, running a hand through his hair and exhaling irritably. "I'm starting to get real fuckin' pissed off at the way everyone seems to want to yank our chains lately. Do this, do that, remember this, bah!"

Quirking one eyebrow up as Naruto began to work himself into a spitting fury, Sasuke reached out and flicked the whiskered blond on the ear. "Go to bed, moron. You're not achieving anything getting all worked up." He'd remain on guard out in the meeting room, needing neither food nor rest to sustain his undead flesh.

"You're going to be the next one on my shit list if you keep that up."

* * *

"Naruto is going to be a problem."

Rolling up the latest report on the economic decline of Suna with calloused hands, Gaara threw it aside and rolled over to face his wife. "Perhaps." The Kazekage allowed, fingering idly at the threadbare futon beneath them. "He's slightly different, but death kept him young. Hopefully experiencing more of the real world will cure him of his idealism."

Decades ago labelling Naruto a mere idealist would have been outright heresy for Gaara, who had worshipped his fellow jinchuuriki like that blond was his own personal prophet. But years of war had made him hard and bitter, and the eyes that he looked out at the world with were jaded. He'd make allowances for nostalgia, but that would only make him bend so far to accommodate Naruto.

Sakura snorted, sprawling on her back and settling her hands behind her head. "I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for that. I grew up with him and I remember just how stupidly stubborn he is. He chased after Sasuke for years, not to mention how he basically forced people to acknowledge him rather than the fox. We admired it back then, but now it could get pretty damn inconvenient. I don't think anything is going to make him wake up to how the world really works."

"Then put it out of your mind." Gaara suggested, letting his eyes flutter shut as he struggled to relax and find a few hours of sleep. "Even if he disagrees with us, it's not in his nature to betray us and side with our enemies. At worst, we'll take back Konoha and then he'll unintentionally intimidate everyone into a watchful peace. We can rebuild without fear of invasion as long as he's alive, and if you don't name him your successor or pick a new Hokage that would abdicate to him, we can keep him isolated from the levers of power. He's a dreamer, not a builder, so he'll never be a serious opponent during peacetime politics."

"Fair enough." Sakura mumbled back, not entirely appeased but willing to drop it for now and let her husband get to sleep. Rationally, she knew Gaara was right. If Naruto was truly so clever and manipulative, _he_ would have been the Rokudaime rather than Kakashi. Age wasn't a true impediment for charismatic visionaries, as the Sandaime and Yondaime had proven, and a crafty Naruto could have leaned on his war hero status to take the hat.

But Sakura couldn't quite shake the feeling that Naruto was not the same boy she'd buried all those years ago. The Naruto she'd just finished a meeting with was softer spoken, visibly watchful, and displayed a strategic insight she'd never seen in the 'old' Naruto.

Some might dismiss her feelings as paranoia, but Sakura had learned the hard way that it was paranoia that truly kept a shinobi alive. If Konoha had been more suspicious of her so-called allies, they wouldn't have all been caught with their pants down by the declaration of war.

So maybe it was just her hard-wired anxiety talking, but no matter what happened; Sakura would be ready. If Naruto listened and learnt from their experiences, then that was fine. And if he didn't, then she'd do whatever had to be done for the sake of Konoha.

* * *

Shifting into Naruto's body felt all kinds of wrong.

When Rias had first began feeding her energy into the ensorcelled black gemstone pendant Ophis had given her, she'd expected a bit of disorientation as her mind travelled between bodies. A dizzy spell, a bit of darkness, and then she'd open her eyes having completed the shift.

Instead, she felt like she was falling, sinking through thick black oil that choked out every bubble of air from her lungs. And in the last moment, when Rias was sure she'd break from the combination of pain and fear, she passed through to the other side and jolted into awareness.

Sucking in a gasp, Rias opened her eyes.

The sight of her own body slumped over in a fluffy scarlet armchair greeted her, pallor colouring aristocratic cheekbones an unhealthy grey and darkening pink lips to a sickly blue.

"Akeno." Rias rasped, flinching at the pained sting that Naruto's vocal chords gave. Several days without use had stiffened up all the muscles in his body, and a little pain was to be expected. She wasn't disturbed by the masculine timbre that accompanied her words. She _wasn't_.

"You're back with us?" Cloth rustled as Akeno strode into Rias' line of vision and settled a hand on one skirt-clad hip. "Does it all seem to be in working order? No shakiness or numbness?"

Heaving Naruto's body to its feet, Rias rolled her shoulders and stretched out the kinks. "No." she decided, cracking fingers that felt just a little too thick and calloused. "Everything is stiff, but that's just to be expected after laying around for a few days with no activity. I don't feel like my control itself is subpar."

As the words rolled off Naruto's tongue, Rias found the movements of her lips growing less stilted with every syllable. Even with a new metaphorical driver, the muscles of her nephew's body had their own memory. Giving herself over to instinct made everything easier, but it increased the disturbing feeling that she wasn't truly in control of herself.

Irrationally, it reminded Rias of the horror stories she'd read where the protagonist ended up a prisoner in their own body.

"That's good." Akeno made a face, calling into question just how sincere that sentiment really was.

Sure, possession was nothing more or less than what they'd agreed to. But soul magic was taboo for a reason, and knowing there was someone else behind Naruto's azure eyes probably gave the Thunder Priestess visceral chills. "Well, there's no time to waste then. You and Ravel are going to be practicing a mock dinner in an hour, so you should get ready. I'll hide your body with Sasuke's."

Tousling crimson strands that felt distressingly short, Rias grimaced. It wasn't that she disliked Ravel by any means, but playing the blonde's lover was quite a few steps out of her comfort zone. Playing Akeno's lover on her own time was difficult enough, even if it had become shockingly easy once the initial hump was crossed. Adding another layer of emotional deception would be draining. "Alright, but first I want to try something."

Rias turned inward, brushing aside the dark siren call of the gemstone necklace around Naruto's neck that was paired with her own. As comforting as returning to her own body would be, she couldn't afford to be weak now. She'd already agreed to walk down this path, and she intended to see it through to the end.

Seizing control of the flowing red energy that seethed through Naruto's every cell, Rias pulled and shaped. Enchantment surged forth, bucking against an unfamiliar master and searing with raw heat. There was so much _power_ that rose up at her command, and Rias couldn't help but marvel at just how strong her nephew had become.

And then the Ruin Princess let go, sparking red lightning from the tips of blunted fingernails that crackled into the small forks of a handheld electric storm. Blood and ashes it _hurt_. The pain was so sudden and sharp that Rias couldn't help but wonder why Naruto's body seemed unharmed. Of course, it was _his_ magic, and forcing it to answer to her would never come without cost.

But despite the psychic pain Rias _could_ command it, and for the sake of their ruse that was all she needed.


	4. Chapter 4

After three days of living in what was little more than a well-lit cave, Naruto was starting to get just a _little_ prickly. Conversation with Sasuke had gotten stilted after the first day since neither of them felt like it would be a great idea to start talking about their life in Gehenna while surrounded by shinobi.

It was like there was an invisible line dividing one world from the other, and neither wanted to cross it.

Or maybe they just didn't want to face the judgement that would probably be in their comrades' eyes when everyone realized that while the shinobi had been fighting and dying, Naruto and Sasuke had been living it up. Things in Hell had been pretty damned luxurious, and they'd made no real efforts to find a way back home.

Sighing explosively, Naruto pressed his face closer into the thin mattress of his rusted cot and shoved those heavy thoughts away. It was better that he dwelled on something more mundane, like that fact that he was bored out of his mind!

At the least he'd hoped that his old friends would take advantage of the time before the storm to drop by and catch up, but the only person he'd seen besides Sasuke was Shikamaru. And while the strategist would answer Naruto's questions, it wasn't the same as speaking to the actual people he once called nakama.

"Stop whining. It's annoying." Sasuke demanded coolly, his dim red gaze shifting away from counting the cracks in the ceiling to stare at Naruto's prone form. There was no heat in his words, just a steel-edged sort of resignation. It was like all the passion had been drained out of Sasuke, leaving only an unbending need to succeed and a willingness to endure beyond human limits.

Naruto had an inkling _that_ was how Uchiha had dealt with the endless tension on the front lines of the war with Mictlan, and wondered if he'd turn out to be just as jaded over the next few months. It was a frightening thought.

Rolling onto his back, Naruto gazed up at the sandstone ceiling with a clenched jaw. "I hate this." He confessed, knowing Sasuke would understand exactly what he meant. He hated not knowing how their friends back in Gehenna were doing. He hated waking up in a world where everything had gone so horrifically wrong. He hated seeing the broken pieces of his friends that had been left behind by war and violence. The destruction of Lee's eyes, the loss of Kiba's legs, the deaths of Tenten and Hinata and Sai and all the rest – he hated it all.

And most of all, Naruto hated the way that he no longer understood anyone around him. He was surrounded by familiar strangers in what had become a land foreign to his memories. Nothing and no one were the way he remembered them, and the longer he looked the more the rose tint faded from his eyes. What exactly had he missed so desperately?

* * *

A quiet jolt of sorcery sent warmth back into her cooled mug of hot chocolate, and with a quiet sip Ravel considered Naruto's swaggering steps. Or rather, she considered the self-confident gait Rias made as she moved her nephew's body back and forth across the lounge. "Try and make it just a touch less effusive and I think you'll have it."

"Try to frown a bit less." Akeno chimed in, shifting her teal gaze up briefly before returning to the paper crane she was folding.

Just as Rias was settling into Naruto's body, Akeno was getting used to Rias'. It was an ongoing project, since while they'd been comfortable enough to be seen briefly passing through by the unfamiliar public, there was always the possibility that those who actually knew Naruto and Rias would pick up on something being wrong.

The quest for the perfect façade had turned a bit neurotic, if Ravel was entirely honest. Not that she blamed the others considering the enormity of the secret they were trying to contain. One mistake could lead to their collective ruin.

Smoothing the muscles of her brow, Rias quirked the edge of Naruto's mouth up in a lopsided grin and winked at Ravel. "Better?"

"Better."

Giving a tired sigh of relief, Rias flopped down in a faded green armchair and slung her knees over the side in a lazy gesture that was more like the boy she was pretending to be than her true self. "I hope we're ready for this." She muttered, knuckling at the bridge of her nose. In just a few short hours they'd be meeting her parents for an informal supper, and they'd finally find out if all their practicing could hold up the ruse.

A sudden knock at the door startled the three young women into watchful stillness, drawing their stares to the dark double doors.

Rias and Akeno traded looks before the Thunder Priestess grimaced and mimicked Rias' cultured tones. "You may enter."

There was no creak from the well-oiled hinges as Yuuto cracked open the door and poked his head in. Rather than offer words, the blond Knight just gave a strained smile before shoving the door fully open to lead Ophis in.

Koneko dogged at the Ouroboros Dragons' heels, amber orbs drilling into the back of the gothic lolita's head. Her semi-hostile vigilance was a visible expression of the inner feelings of both peerages, who'd reluctantly accepted that the goddess was part of their life now; knowing there was little they could really do but accommodate Ophis' whims.

Without Ophis, they had no chance of getting Naruto or Sasuke back.

But that didn't mean that dealing with her dictates and lack of regard didn't rankle.

"What can we do for you?" Rias greeted, skipping over the pleasantries she knew Ophis didn't really care about.

Ophis' expression remained placid as she considered the two young women. "You are taking advantage of the artifacts I created for you. Do not use them for longer than six hours at a time. Your life force is being drained to sustain the possession, and your true bodies may expire if you exceed that limit."

The look Yuuto gave her was utterly horrified, but Rias brushed it off; just like she brushed off the sudden chill of fear in her gut. They'd never used the crystals for longer than four hours at a time, so it wasn't like she had come near to accidentally killing herself. "Thank you for the warning, but I doubt giving it is why you came here today."

"Indeed." Letting her focus drift idly from one face to the next, Ophis finally settled on squarely meeting Valerie's timid crimson eyes. "While they are in the other world Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke have no method of independently contacting me, and I have no desire to constantly observe them. Their chakra would be unable to interface with any relics I gave them. Therefore, I will transport two of you to that world and give you the ability to call on me."

Ravel's first instinct was to volunteer herself, but she only got as far as setting her mug of cocoa to the side before her rational side reasserted itself. She doubted that Ophis was going to be a daily ferry, so whoever was brought dimension hopping would be in for the long haul. Rias couldn't go because she had to pretend to be Naruto, Akeno couldn't go because she had to pretend to be Rias, and Ravel herself couldn't go because she had a high profile of her own.

If the pinched quality Rias gave Naruto's mouth was any indication, the Ruin Princess had come to the same conclusion as Ravel.

"I will go." Koneko declared neutrally, folding her hands behind her back with all the rigid tension of a trained soldier. "Yuuto may be needed to act as Rias' escort to social events, and Gasper is too young to be involved in this."

"Very well." Ophis accepted before anyone could raise an objection. "And the other?"

"What do you mean 'other'?" Rias questioned sharply, the baritone in her borrowed voice rumbling with hints of tense displeasure. "Surely you only need to borrow one of us?" Maybe it was a bit petty of her, but their little family was already strained at the seams. Why did Ophis seem so content to scatter them to the winds?

For the first time since she'd entered the room Ophis' blank façade slid away, with her eyebrows pinching together in irritation and impatience. "Naruto and Sasuke will not necessarily travel together. In fact, based on the babblings of those humans they are currently aligned with, they will make a habit of operating separately. Therefore, it would be more prudent if they each travelled with someone capable of making contract with me. I have no desire to squander the investment I have made in them because of sentiment. Now, who is the other?"

Rias clenched her jaw, but subsided into sullen silence when Akeno placed a cautionary hand on her shoulder.

"It's me." Valerie spoke up, breaking the tense stillness with an unusual steel note to her voice. Even her slitted red eyes had shifted from quiet anxiety to a gentle sort of determination. "There's no one else who can go, unless we tell other people about Naruto's secret. Which I'm _not_ going to do, and which I'm not going to let anyone else here do. So, it has to be me."

"Yeah." Ravel sighed to herself, ducking her head down and picking at the edge of her fingernail to hide her discontented expression. "It does."

* * *

Naruto wrinkled his nose at the smell of horseflesh, pulling his kasa down to better cover his eyes and absently chewing the stalk of wheat he'd plucked from the roadside. They might still be in southern marches of Hi no Kuni patrolled by Konoha-nin, but the demarcation line was rolling closer with every second and his disguise needed to hold up until the last possible moment.

"I don't suppose you've got a bit more of that jerky?" Naruto prodded the driver as he leaned back against the straw-filled cart, rubbing a hand over his rumbling belly and wishing they'd been given rations of ramen rather than dried beef. "I'm starving!"

A thick-set brown moustache twitched as the driver – whose name Naruto really couldn't remember – glared out of the corner of his verdant eyes. "No." the Suna-nin intoned deeply, looking like he was swallowing down a barrage of prickly curses. The obvious frustration was almost enough to make Naruto feel sorry for the guy.

Almost. The driver was just too much of a prick for Naruto to feel real contrition.

"Alright, alright, fine." The jinchuuriki moaned lowly, rubbing a knuckle into the thick-smeared makeup that hid his birthmarks. "There's no need to get your panties in a bunch over it."

"Hmph."

Rolling his eyes at the dismissal, Naruto let his focus drift back out over the grassy countryside. The warm sun beaming down over the enormous prairie was nostalgic. How many dozens of times had he seen a similar landscape when he'd gone to visit Gaara for a while all those years ago? The sight made him feel just a little bit closer to home, as opposed to the creeping alienation he'd experienced living underground in Suna.

"Do you think they're already there?" the blond questioned vaguely to break the silence. 'Them' being Sasuke's group and 'there' being the point of invasion. The final plan had first contact expected for high noon – rather than in the middle of the night like a cliché – and Naruto's own caravan was right on schedule. But was Sasuke on time, or had the Uchiha been delayed? Maybe Sasuke's status as a literal zombie made him push on faster than Naruto's convoy.

It wasn't that Naruto was worried about Sasuke per se, but he still liked to know what was going on. Especially now that he'd come back to find half his friends dead or crippled simply because he wasn't around to watch over them.

"No. There's no reason to expect them to be, and our friends are a pretty punctual sort. They wouldn't have pushed through the night and risked a lame horse." The reply was absent and meandering, which was exactly the sort of response any watching Kumo-nin might expect out of a real civilian farmer.

Or from two ninja in disguise with another six hidden in the hay behind them, pretending to be nothing more than a pair of rubes.

The blast of flame and fury was as sudden as a thunderbolt, slamming into the side of the cart and making it explode into a conflagration of woodchips, grass seed, and swollen embers.

"Contact left!" Was shouted in the vicinity of Naruto's feet, and with a slow sigh he realized that he'd been blown off to lay spread-eagled in the ditch.

Rolling languidly to his feet, Naruto dusted the soot from his green tunic. "And _this_ is why you should let me use sage mode, ya idiots." He mumbled, cracking his neck and wiping a bit of soot from his cheek before finally turning to consider the battlefield.

Streaks of dark brown flitted over the grasslands to the north as a squad of Iwa shinobi dodged his team's attempts to return fire. The air was full of ash and the coppery scent of blood, and Naruto knew that one of the men placed under his command had died in the first strike. He spared an absent thought of regret for the loss before putting it out of his mind.

The surprise had whittled things down to ten on seven, not counting Naruto himself.

Evidently, their disguise had been less perfect than they'd hoped, but better than they'd feared. A squad of ten is what Kumo might sent to be part of a routine border skirmish. It wasn't nearly enough to fight off a sustained invasion, especially when the attacking team had a jinchuuriki at their backs.

Naruto gave his shoulders a final roll to work out the kinks, and then opened himself up to Kurama.

The sensation of red demonic chakra seething into his system hit the blond like a drug, shrinking his slitted pupils to pinpricks and making his heart thunder in his chest. It was only a fraction of the power Kurama could give him, but the burn was so nostalgic and invigorating that Naruto found himself giving an involuntary feral grin.

It had been too long since he'd been in true open battle like he'd been born for, and even though he could kick the ass of every shinobi on the field with one arm tied behind his back; Naruto wanted to give himself over to the joy of battle. A few back-alley fights in Azmarin had nothing on real ninja combat.

Rocketing forward like an arrow launched from a bowstring, Naruto barreled right past his startled allies and picked out his first target. A green eyed blonde-haired Iwa jounin swiftly found himself with a knee to the face, knocking him out instantly and leaving Naruto profoundly unsatisfied.

"Oh, come on, is that all you guys have?" he complained, turning on the spot to face a shocked red-haired woman. "I'll even give you the first shot." Naruto offered, letting his arms flop lazily to his sides. "Make it _count_."

The combination of nonchalance and implied mockery was enough to push the woman from surprise to anger, and with a heavy surge of chakra she formed three one handed seals. A thick spray of lava burst from her mouth, glowing bright orange and setting the grassland aflame in a dozen places as the torrent arced towards her target.

Naruto blinked and hopped to the side, clearing several yards in a single bound and quirking an eyebrow as the continuous stream of magma followed. "You wouldn't happen to be related to the old Mizukage, would ya?" he wondered aloud, not bothering to wait for an answer as he ducked low and lunged.

The smack of his fist on the tender flesh of the redhead's stomach was loud enough to be heard over the clash of combat surrounding them, and Naruto winced as she collapsed bonelessly over his arm. He'd been trying to scale back the power in his strike, but it was still a one hit knockout. Twenty years in Gehenna hadn't done anything for his control, and he'd forgotten just how much stronger he was than the common shinobi.

" **They're all weak."** Kurama rumbled, irritated at his host's antics. The bijuu's disapproval prompted a scowl from his host.

" _So I'll just go after them like they're made of wet paper."_ Naruto shot back, quickly engaging a ponytailed brunette. This time his punch was only enough to knock the man back, rather than disable his opponent completely. _"And why does it bother you so much anyway?"_

" **It's a waste of our time."**

Naruto disagreed, but he knew that Kurama would never agree with him on this, so there was no point in arguing over it. The fox only found joy in overcoming strong opponents or in mercilessly crushing weak challengers. The thought of trying to meet someone on the field of combat with equal strength simply to feel the joy of pitting skill against skill held no appeal to Kurama.

Blocking an overhead axe kick with his forearms, Naruto decided Kurama's boredom didn't matter in the long run anyway. Soon enough the real invasion would begin and he'd be expected to overwhelm the opposition as Konoha's secret superweapon, which would satisfy the fox's preferences.

But until then Naruto wanted to at least enjoy himself. As a devil Naruto had trained himself to fight with sword and sorcery, relying on the refined training demanded of a scion of the Gremory clan. Here and now, in his old body, he could return to his roots as a brawler and finally let himself go. " _Bring it on!_ "

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

Blood splattered in thick dark droplets as Sasuke clenched his fist, the translucent fingers of his Susanoo mimicking the motion and crushing the last of the Kumo shinobi into wet paste. Little chunks of gore dripped through the spaces between the ghostly warrior's knuckles, landing on the broken ground with wet plops.

"Keep moving." The Uchiha ordered his handlers, letting their horrified gazes slide off his back like water. He had never been the sort of person overly concerned with what the faceless masses thought of him anyway, and with the thrill of victory humming in his undead chest Sasuke gave even less of a damn than usual.

It had been too long since Sasuke had experienced the feeling of utterly dominating his enemies. In Gehenna he was an ant scurrying underfoot trying to avoid the predations of giants. But here, in the world he had been born in, Sasuke was _strong_. He was stronger than anyone else in the world except Naruto, and even that was questionable given that an Edo Tensei construct never tired and felt no pain.

So what if Gaara's little stooges were losing their lunches? Their opinions meant less than nothing to him next to the feeling of violent fulfillment.

He wondered if Naruto – who had been born and bred for war just as Sasuke himself was – also shared the uplifting sensation of triumph that now bloomed in his breast.

Letting the last vestiges of his Susanoo fade away, Sasuke eyed the coral tint that slowly stained the horizon. Dusk was drawing near.

With the undead Uchiha spearheading their offence the Southern alliance had crushed half a dozen outposts since they'd started fighting just after high noon.

If they pushed on through the night at a similar pace they'd be in spitting distance of Konoha itself, but it was probably better to cut their speed in half. The armies following his invasion force could only invest and fortify so quickly, and while Sasuke didn't need to eat, he'd rather not have his handlers die because the defenders cut their supply lines.

It was better to take the time to do things right; a lesson he'd learnt hard in his first life.

Turning away from the shattered battlefield, Sasuke gave Shino a sharp nod and launched into a tireless sprint.

A handful of curses met his ears as the living shinobi scrambled to follow in his wake, but Sasuke didn't bother to look back. They had orders to follow him, and since he'd done all the fighting there was no reason for them to be too fatigued to keep up.

"I would suggest-"

"I know. Half-march." Sasuke ruthlessly cut off Shino's puffed words once the Aburame had managed to draw level with him. He already knew what the best course of action was and didn't have the patience to have strategy babyfed to him by his old classmate.

Naruto would have scolded him for being rude, but Sasuke had no attachment to most of the people he'd left behind. Twenty years apart had dulled his sentiment to the point that it was no skin off his back if the Aburame got all pissy about being shrugged off. All the people he cared about now lived in Gehenna.

Sasuke only cared about Konoha in abstract terms, because he didn't want to admit that everything he'd fought for had been for nothing. If their sacrifices in the name of peace for Konoha had turned out to be pointless, who was to say any sacrifices they made for the sake of Gehenna wouldn't be similarly pointless?

 _No_.

Sasuke viscerally refused to accept that possibility. They would have peace by any means necessary.

* * *

The stub of his left arm throbbed with phantom pain, but A bore it stoically and signed the last of his paperwork off with a flourish. For twenty years he'd lived with the pain, rejecting the well-meant suggestions of his subordinates to get some kind of prosthetic.

The Yondaime Raikage always scoffed that looking for a replacement for the left arm Uchiha Sasuke had cut off was an affront to his pride. The idea of grafting on one of those Zetsu limbs was repulsive, and beyond that he'd just end up looking like a warrior ashamed of his scars. But beneath the pride was a sense of shame, the feeling that even if he could that he didn't deserve to walk around hearty and healthy.

A had chosen war over peace for the sake of his people's continued survival, soaking his hands in blood and turning his back on the supposed 'Child of the Prophecy'. A bit of phantom pain and a few ugly scars in exchange for the lives lost and the dreams abandoned was a cheap payment.

Ah, if only the Uzumaki boy had lived! Naruto had an earnest innocent and exuberant charisma that appealed to everyone from brats in their cradles to hidebound war veterans like Onoki. With Naruto as their spokesman maybe the shinobi could have weathered the economic depression together and found a new destiny. The future Naruto had promised had been so bright it was like a spiritual fantasy, ringing down from some distant heaven.

Maybe though, even with Naruto on their side, fantasy was all peace could ever be.

Shinobi weren't warriors, they were liars, killers, and thieves, and if they stopped being paid to do those things, then what was left? How could they put food on the table when no one hired them to wage war? There'd been some talk of adapting jutsu to the various civilian industries, but that kind of development took time.

Time no one had when the people were marching in the streets looking for someone to fill their hollow stomachs. If Kumo hadn't gone to war against Konoha, it would have eventually gone to war with itself, which was even more unthinkable.

"Raikage-sama?"

"What?" A barked irritably, slapping his meaty palm on the desk and glaring at his sheepish secretary. "What do you want, girl?"

Long used to the Raikage's moods, his secretary didn't quail or stutter at the first sign of his displeasure. Instead she simply pouted a bit before stepping fully into his office and laying a thick folder down in front of him. "This is the latest batch from the Tsuchikage. The cold war with Sand might go on forever, but she's pitching a few ideas about how to solve the economic problems without a Kumo-Iwa war if we do conquer them."

"Fine, fine." A grumbled, waving her off and eying the papers with half-hearted interest.

Everyone with any political sense knew that it was in the best interest of all the shinobi nations to prolong the conflict rather than have a definite victor. Promoting eventual victory for the sake of patriotism or imagined slights was simply abut appealing to the masses. A could have destroyed the Southern Alliance years ago if he wanted a purely military victory. Allowing the 'enemy' to exist was necessary for the survival of the shinobi system, because enemies meant competition.

When some chubby merchant decided to get one over on his rivals by hiring a Kumo's shinobi to assassinate them, his rivals fought back by hiring Konoha's shinobi. Obviously no village would pit its own soldiers against each other in death matches as a matter of course – the decline of the Bloody Mist was all the proof anyone needed of _that_. Naruto's peace had made them function as one decentralized village, turning away conflicting missions for the sake of avoiding bloodshed, which meant a lot of shinobi had been forced out of work.

They needed the pay that came with competing missions to flourish, and thus they needed war.

So Kurotsuchi's little peace proposals could be one of two things. Either she was naïve enough to believe that the shinobi lifestyle could ever lead to peace, or she was just putting on a show of seeking a new path for the sake of her advisors and political opponents.

A personally was never quite sure what that girl honestly wanted. She played her cards too close to her chest. It made him miss Onoki, stubborn old fossil the man had been. At least A had understood him, fellow men of war that they'd been.

* * *

Totsuka Ken rubbed at one crusty brown eye, fighting back the urge to yawn. He _hated_ night shifts; almost as much as he hated getting posted in Konoha at all. It was too hot, too humid, and too hostile. The natives glared at him like he'd personally murdered their babies every time he walked down the streets. Compared to the clean cool air of Kumo and the warm faces of his countrymen, Konoha was a shithole.

Not to mention Ken had left his fiancé behind when his bosses had deployed his team down to the South.

Airi was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen, with her warm green eyes and fingers calloused from good honest farming. Sure, she wasn't a supermodel, but she was more real than any of the bimbos he'd seen in the magazine ads, and Ken loved her. Once he finished his current rotation, he'd have saved up enough money for them to get married and start a new life. Maybe he'd retire and work on a farm himself? Shinobi work paid a lot better but he wanted to die in his sleep at the age of a hundred years rather than die with a kunai in the throat at half that.

"Still mooning over your girl?" A voice barked in his ear as a heavy arm was slung over his shoulder.

Yakumo mussed up his best friend's hair, grinning when Ken squawked and tried to shove him off. "Look bro, I get that you want to keep it all on the up-and-up but a man's got needs. No one's gonna rat you out if you go take a tumble. You're missing out! Not to mention the girls down at the Maiden are just…" he kissed the tips of his fingers.

A cherry red flush lit Ken's cheeks, and he pulled away from the older shinobi with a glare. "No way! I'm not a dirty perv like you."

"You're just saying that because you're still a virgin." Yakumo crowed.

"I am not!"

Bringing his fists to his chest, Yakumo flapped his bent arms like wings and clucked like a chicken. "What was that, Virgin-kun? I couldn't hear you over all the chirping. Bwuck, bwuck, bwuckack!"

"Fuck off!"

Their antics drew the attention of a couple of their fellow watchmen, who joined in on ribbing Ken with gusto. Their good-natured teasing ate up the time and might have carried on longer if not for the sudden flicker of flame that appeared on the southern horizon.

"The hell is that?" Yakumo muttered, squinting at the small but growing light. "Did some asshole decide to get their breakfast in right before dawn and start a forest fire?"

Ken sighed, brushing off his sleeves and standing tall now that his friend had been distracted. "Might be." The chuunin agreed easily, sparing a glance for the slowly spreading fire. "Wouldn't be the first time these asheaters forgot how to cook like civilized people. Do you want to send the message or do you want me to?"

Screwing his face into an expression of distaste, Yakumo turned shook his head and shoved at Ken's shoulder. "No chance. You can deal with the captain this time. Sage knows he'll be passed out drunk in some wrinkled whore's tits again, and it's not my turn to listen to his rants about proper respect."

A rather large part of Ken wanted to just roll his eyes and try to bribe Yakumo into doing it again. _Everyone_ hated Iwari-taicho and the captain hated them right back. It was mystery how someone so disliked by the men ended up in charge of them – most people put their bets in bribery or blackmail. Ken personally thought Iwari had used family connections to leapfrog his way up the chain of command.

But the larger part of Ken nagged at him to be fair. Everyone took their turns putting up with the captain for the sanity of the whole unit. So when his term came around, he really should do his part. "Fine, fine. Just don't expect me to badger him about your vacation request. That's on you."

Yakumo grinned toothily, but whatever reply he offered was drowned out by a sudden rush of sound as the trees below the walls of Konoha suddenly exploded with a sun bright flash of brilliant orange.

* * *

Twenty years out of the saddle left Naruto feeling a bit winded, perfectly resurrected body or not. But that little bit of fatigue burned away in an instant when he cleared Konoha's walls in Kurama Mode only to find that the faces of the Hokage Monument had been smoothed away, leaving a featureless grey expanse.

At the point, the only thing left was a red-hot ball of pure rage boiling in his gut. Slitted orange eyes narrowed as Naruto forced his gaze away from the empty space where his father's face should have been to the foreign tower crowned with a Kumogakure flag. "Bastards." He rumbled, lurching forward.

Rock and wood crumbled beneath the toes of Kurama's fluid body as the giant chakra monster stomped up the streets, roaring so loud hundreds of windows shattered. Maybe he should be a bit more careful about the collateral damage, but the deeper he moved into Konoha the more Naruto found his anger building.

It wasn't just the Hokage Monument that had been scored away. He could see the distant grove where the memorial stone should have been, but instead the entire forest had been cleared away for a cluster of condos. The rounded red tiles roofs of his childhood had been almost entirely replaced by square shining metal panels.

The invaders hadn't just conquered Konoha, they'd destroyed it and remade it in their own image. There was nothing left of the home he had such precious memories of.

" _ **Easy kid."**_ Kurama cautioned. _**"Buildings are just buildings. Blow 'em up and rebuild 'em later if you want. Don't lose your head."**_

Swallowing thickly, Naruto clenched his fists before relaxing with a sigh. "Yeah, I guess." He allowed, trying to throw off the fury and focus on his mission. He couldn't get too attached to material things. The conquest might have turned Konoha into an eyesore, but if he couldn't forgive that how could he ask people to forgive the lives that had been lost?

Fireballs and bolts of lightning rippled over the flank of Naruto's summoned chakra construct, sucking at his reserves like tiny little mosquitos. They wouldn't be a threat for another few hours, but if he just sat around eventually he'd tire out.

Time to take care of business.

Mentally stepping back a bit, Naruto let Kurama's consciousness come to the fore. As he gave up bits of control over his own body, the flaming orange fluid of his bijuu transformation began to turn solid. If they switched entirely the liquid chakra would be replaced by flesh and bone, but they didn't need to go that far. They just needed to go far enough for Kurama to be able to speak.

" **Surrender now, mortals, or I'll slaughter you all!"** Kurama's voice projected over the village like a sonic blast, making Naruto snort in amusement even as the seemingly wild bijuu made threats.

Then, just to prove he could, Naruto swirled up a tailed beast bomb and fired it directly up into the sky. A couple of heartbeats later the ball of chakra exploded, splitting the clouds with a nova of pure white flame. It was large enough to blot out the rising sun, and the rush of wind it generated rose to a ghostly wail.

" **You want another one, bitches?"**

"Are you trying to be a yakuza or something?" Naruto muttered, glaring down when the volleys of elemental jutsu launched at them only increased. "Because it's not all that scary. Just corny, yeah? Have to give these assholes points for being brave though, I'd have thought they'd be pissing themselves running home to mommy by now."

" _ **Bite me."**_ Kurama sulked, giving up all control to Naruto. **"You're on your own then."**

Shaking his head at the tempermental bijuu, Naruto clicked his tongue before lashing out with one of his tails. The orange appendage wrapped around the nearest watch tower and began to squeeze, painfully slow enough to give the enemy soldiers inside time to escape. He wasn't afraid to kill when he had to, but they weren't at that point. Not yet anyway.

"How much longer are the rest of them going to be?" the blond wondered aloud as he sought out a tower flying an Iwa flag and barreled right through it, bricks and mortar shattering beneath the weight of Kurama's body.

Naruto had gotten a bit excited when he caught sight of Konoha, but he hadn't run that far ahead of the troops. They should have showed up by now and started pushing for a surrender.

Then blue flame collided with Naruto's construct, throwing the giant orange fox off its feet and into the face of the former Hokage Monument.

Shock gave way to resolve as Naruto climbed back out, wincing at the crack of granite that echoed as an entire sheet of rock fell from the ridge and hit the ground far below in a shower of dust and fragmented stone. "We should have known." He murmured, more to keep Kurama calm as the fox swiftly shifted from surprise to an all-consuming hatred. "I'm sorry."

" _ **These fucking humans are all the same."**_

Naruto thinned his lips, but ultimately didn't deny that. He didn't have time to get in an argument with Kurama over the idea of collective guilt. Not with the giant azure hellcat glaring them down.

In the end, it shouldn't have been a surprise. They'd chosen war over peace, so why not create more jinchuuriki?

"Let's do this."

Then he launched forward like a missile, chakra burning with hostile intent.


	6. Chapter 6

White splinters of bone poked up grotesquely through tanned skin, with porous marrow glistening wetly under the sunlight. A single bit of flying rubble had been enough to completely crush Ken's limb, torn arteries pumping out precious blood with every stuttering heartbeat.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! But I have to do it!"

Ken's wail of utter despair spiraled up into an ear-splitting shriek as Yakumo brought his katana down and severed his friend's arm just below the shoulder. "Fucking Sand-nin." He grit out, blinking through the sting of tears in his eyes as he bent to tie a tourniquet around Ken's bleeding stump.

The combination of blood loss and pain was enough to make Ken pass out by the time Yakumo managed to apply enough pressure to keep Ken from bleeding out. It would buy Ken a few minutes while Yakumo tried to find him a med-nin, but any longer than that and the shock would probably kill him.

Not that Yakumo had much hope for that as he heaved Ken's limp body onto his back and began to move through the rubble of Konoha.

How in the hell had Suna managed to get their hands on the Kyuubi? It had vanished years ago when Uzumaki Naruto was assassinated, and it was supposed to take another few decades at least before the beast's chakra gathered enough for it to be reborn.

Fuck, fuck! He'd just wanted to finish his shift, sleep through the day, and hit the town for his weekend off. Now he was just trying to stay alive while the fucking Sand-nin poured in through the broken walls and the new Kyuubi jinchuuriki fought a death match with the Nibi's jinchuuriki right over their heads.

A shockwave threw Yakumo to his knees, grating the skin of his shins and making him shout in shock. Biting his lip as he lurched back to his feet and readjusted Ken's deadweight, Yakumo glanced up at the sky and gaped.

A set of bright orange fists were grasping hold of an azure forearm the length of a skyscraper, chakra flames of different colours sputtering weakly as the enormous Kyuubi _pulled_. The sudden jerk was enough to yank the Nibi over before throwing the giant two-tailed hellcat into a cluster of buildings with a thunderous crash and a hurricane gust of wind.

"Shit." Yakumo gasped, crouching against the gale as a storm of dust swept over the village. He held strong for a heartbeat before Ken was torn from his back and swept up into the tempest. "Ken!"

Instinctively, Yakumo knew Ken was dead, and with a bitter scream he turned and plunged through the fog in search of some allied unit to give him orders and clarify what the fuck he was supposed to do. He was just a career chuunin pushed into border patrol, he wasn't trained to handle a bijuu invasion!

Another explosion rumbled, and Yakumo stared numbly at the rapidly approaching orange streak falling from the sky. "Gods, have mercy…"

Everything went black.

* * *

In the middle of a fight, it was hard to tell when he ended and Kurama began. Naruto and the fox were so mentally melded that sometimes he felt like he _was_ Kurama, with excitement and rage at the bijuu's enslavement pounding through his veins.

Naruto rolled, knocking over half a dozen buildings as he gathered his paws beneath him. Then he shuffled, the dark tip of his nose sighting down the Nibi before firing off a swirling bijuudama.

Not waiting to see if his missile connected, Naruto struck like a bolt of lightning. Orange fur rippled as the giant fox leapt up and over a cluster of streets to land on the Nibi's back, and Naruto bit down.

The azure hellcat gave a hissing wail, bucking frantically and trying to dislodge Naruto's chokehold. Around and around the tangled pair went, rolling through a trio of office buildings before slamming face-first into the former Hokage monument.

Caught between fire and stone, Naruto spat a curse and bit down hard. His nine tails wrapped around his opponent's limbs and pulled. The Nibi was strong, but the Kyuubi had four times as many tails and more power besides. It only took a few minutes of struggle to force down the other jinchuuriki. "Give it up already!"

"Never!" A deep and unmistakably male voice roared back, startling the blond. He'd been expecting Matatabi's new jinchuuriki to be a girl like Yugito. "Now get off leafeater!"

With that the Kumo nin began to fight harder, wailing and flailing until the tangled mass of bijuu rolled back into the village, leaving a bulldozed wasteland behind them.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Naruto shouted, twisting so he could brace his back feet against the broken ground and stop the rampage of destruction. "Are you trying to get blow up the entire fucking village?"

"I would rather destroy this whole village than let Konoha take it back." Where before the younger jinchuuriki had been all venom and passion, his voice fell to grim icy determination. Then the blue flames that made up Matatabi's hide began to shift and burn.

" _ **Naruto you need to move!"**_

"What?"

" _ **He's going to explode and take us all with him!"**_

Heat seared against the skin of Naruto's face, burning away spots of skin and leaving red blisters that Kurama's chakra rushed to heal. Damn it, was this kid _that_ proud? There must be thousands of his own allies still fighting, not to mention the civilians and the combined Sand-Leaf shinobi. He'd wipe out the whole village because he couldn't deal with losing?

Or maybe it wasn't arrogance. Maybe it was fanaticism. The Kyuubi being in the hands of the Leaf again would have the Cloud and Stone pissing themselves. Throwing his own life away and the lives of his comrades might seem like a fair price to pay to get rid of that kind of 'superweapon'.

_Fuck._

" _ **Naruto!"**_

"Die, Uzumaki Naruto!"

The blond took a steadying breath against the shock of being addressed by name, clenched his jaw, and made a choice.

* * *

Sasuke wasn't delusional enough to expect Konoha to look exactly the same. No city could go through a war without rebuilding into something different. But in of all his vague suppositions of how the village might have changed since he'd last seen it, the Uchiha had never imagined it looking like a nuclear wasteland.

Black glass stretched as far as his Sharingan eyes could see, breaking into sharp edges and sudden dark gaps that tunneled into the earth. It was an utterly lifeless scene, with not even the Hokage monument spared from the blast. There was a huge crack splitting the plateau down the portion where the Yondaime's head had once been.

What the hell did Naruto do?

Waving off his so-called allies, Sasuke stepped out into the apocalyptic landscape. Ash puffed under his heels as he wandered over the ebony hills, drawn northwest like the needle of a compass. Maybe his state of undeath made him more aware of the bonds tugging at his soul, or maybe his Rinnegan just enhanced his chakra sensing ability. Either way, he knew exactly where to find Naruto.

When he finally settled his gaze on the blond, Sasuke exhaled a sharp gust of displeasure. "You still alive there, dobe?" he prodded, getting a wordless groan in reply.

To put it bluntly, Naruto looked like shit warmed over. The jinchuuriki's sunshine strands had grown to a waist length tangle, stained with white streaks any toothless granny would be proud of. The whiskered skin of Naruto's face was lined with faint wrinkles. Ropy red scars crisscrossed over the naked flesh of his left arm and chest, while Naruto's right arm was simply gone just below the shoulder.

Gritting his teeth so hard that they cracked and healed anew, Sasuke bent down to scoop up his heavily wounded friend. "I'd break your skull over my knee for your reckless stupidity, but someohow I don't think the message would sink in." The threat was half-hearted, and when Naruto coughed a fine mist of blood Sasuke found himself protectively pulling the blond tighter against his chest.

Another person would have been bursting with questions about how Naruto had gotten to be in such a horrific condition, but Sasuke knew the man well enough that he didn't need to ask. Everything could be inferred from sight and his knowledge of Naruto alone. Kumo or Iwa had deployed some sort of weapon of mass destruction, and Naruto had tried to be a self-sacrificing fool and contain the blast with his own body. Unfortunately it hadn't worked all that well, seeing as how real life wasn't like the movies.

Turning on his heel, Sasuke began hopping back towards the remnants of the southern walls. The idiot needed medical attention, and when he woke up Naruto would find his body in a very different state than what he'd left it in. The rapid wounding and healing cycle the blond went through to survive the explosion had probably aged him twenty years, and there was no telling what other scars had formed internally during the blast.

"Moron." He muttered lowly, blowing the hair out of his eyes. No doubt he'd have to sit on Naruto to make him stay in bed long enough to heal up from this latest bout of moralism. The Kyuubi gave Naruto a powerful healing factor, but it wasn't perfect. A body could only take so much abuse before giving out, and Naruto wasn't allowed to die before they managed to fix the shitshow they'd come back to.

"Uchiha Sasuke. Do you care to explain this latest idiocy?"

A startled blink.

" _You."_

* * *

Naruto woke to red shards of agony threading through every cell of his body. It felt like he'd run an Olympic marathon before fighting a war and then going to sleep underneath an elephant. Every breath was a pained struggle against a suffocating weight, crowned with the sensation of broken glass in his lungs.

It felt like it took more effort to open his eyes than he'd had to spend fighting Kaguya.

The dimly lit sight of a canvas medical tent greeted him, weather stains dizzily drawing his confused stare before Naruto forced himself to shake off the last dregs of unconsciousness. "Hello?" he rasped with the note of gravel over pavement.

"Do you make a habit of being suicidally reckless, Uzumaki Naruto?" A grey gaze set in a face wreathed in black hair taking up half of Naruto's view. "Because if so I believe I will have to reconsider your worth as my soldier."

"Ophis?"

"At least part of your brain seems to be working." Amber glittered as someone else leaned over the confused jinchuuriki. "Though that's not saying much though, considering it's you." In contrast to the cool words a warm hand briefly touched over the stump of Naruto's right arm.

"Koneko?"

A wordless hum was the only answer the nekomata gave before she withdrew to let a teary-eyed Valerie monopolize the blond's attention.

"How are you feeling? Do you want me to get you a glass of water? Fluff your pillow? Another blanket? Some pain medication?" The dhampir rambled on with concern, visibly rattled even as Ophis snorted and also pulled away.

Footsteps padded away as the two girls slipped out of the tent, leaving Naruto alone with Valerie.

Naruto licked his cracked lips with a tongue that felt like sandpaper, coughing faintly before shaking his head. Even that tiny motion felt like his skull was rotating on a rusted spike. "Why are you here? _How_ are you here?" he demanded, gaze sharpening as his scattered wits turned away from the sheer discomfort he was in to refocus on his Bishop.

Valerie quirked her mouth up into an awkward grin, crimson eyes shifting away before skittering back to meet Naruto's expectant look. "Ah, well, Ophis decided that someone needed to cross over here. She said she didn't know how long you'd need to be here, and since she couldn't spend all her time watching you, that a couple of us needed to be here to summon her when you and Sasuke were finished."

To Naruto's displeasure, the blonde girl was obviously lying. Or perhaps not lying, but she was certainly leaving out some things that he would want to know. "I see, and what else is Rias up to?"

Shrugging lightly, Valerie fisted her hands in her lap while struggling against the urge to look away. "She's not doing a whole lot. Mostly she's just been spending her time lying to everyone and pretending that both peerages are on a vacation. Nothing too difficult."

The frustration that churned in his chest was foreign. Naruto couldn't remember any time where he'd honestly been frustrated with Valerie. His Bishop was easy going, kind, and more than a little easy on the eyes. She'd never tried to hide anything from him before, and the fact she was trying to now put him on edge.

Still, maybe Naruto would have better luck getting whatever it was out of her when he wasn't stuck in a bed. So with a drawn out sigh the jinchuuriki dropped it, relaxing back into his pillow and considering Valerie with a half-lidded stare. "So, is it just you and Koneko that came over?"

"Yep." Now that Naruto's hospital bed interrogation was over, Valerie found herself studying the little stump that was left of Naruto's right arm. It horrified the blonde to see her savior so badly hurt, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that once they returned home Naruto would be back in his whole and healthy devil body.

Squirming a bit at Valerie's concerned hangdog expression, Naruto twisted his head and frowned off to the side. "It's not that bad." He mumbled. Sure, it had hurt like a motherfucker getting blown off, but it wasn't something he hadn't lived through before.

Naruto didn't want anyone's pity. It made him feel weak.

"Naruto…"

Cloth rustled as the tent flap drew back and Sasuke stepped inside, the Uchiha's sudden appearance cutting off Valerie's stutter. "Finally awake are you, knucklehead?"

"Bastard."

The corner of Sasuke's porcelain mouth curved, gravedirt crackling and reforming at the motion as he passed Naruto a glass of water. "So I see you're up to speed on our unique situation. Ophis and I spoke and we decided the smartest thing to do would be to keep the girls out of sight and out of mind, as best we can. None of the grunts are going to question us, but you can be damn sure Sakura will if she finds out about them, and that would add… complications."

Gleefully gulping down the blessedly cool water, Naruto mulled over the implication that Sakura couldn't be trusted. Twenty years ago he'd have answered that kind of suggestion with his fists. Team Seven had seemed so unbreakable back then.

But the Sakura he'd seen bits of pieces of since his resurrection was a very different woman.

A woman he no longer knew.

Besides, was it really any of their business anyway? Kaguya had proven there were different worlds, so it wasn't like they were keeping a huge secret from her. A new life in a new world was basically the same thing as wandering around in the afterlife; functionally anyway. Gehenna and Konoha didn't touch, except for a rare alignment of secret stars, and perhaps they never would again.

"Yeah, yeah." Naruto grimaced, shoving his empty cup back at Sasuke. "I'll keep my mouth shut. What other news do ya got for me?" With the dust washed away from the inside of his mouth and throat, Naruto's mind felt clean and revitalized.

Folding his arms behind his back in an idle military posture that Naruto assumed he'd picked up on the frontlines in Gehenna, Sasuke began. "You were out for five days, so by now we expect everyone from here to Yuki no Kuni to have heard that the war is back on and Konoha is fielding a Kyuubi jinchuuriki. We're hoping they assume it's a new one rather than realize that Sakura pulled us out of the grave."

Naruto sent a quick smile towards his Bishop, reassuring the blonde girl as she uncertainly made to leave. "You don't have to go." Then he returned his focus to Sasuke. "No, they probably know its us. Jiraiya-sensei told me that if I died with the seal intact Kurama would disperse for fifty years or so. It's only because I'm alive again that his chakra all gathered back together. Kurama said something about his mind, the nexus, and the seal or whatever. I didn't really get it, but they might. So they're probably going to know. And there was that kid…"

"What kid?" Sasuke demanded sharply.

"The guy they sealed Matatabi into. He called me by name, so he definitely knew it was me. So either Kumo and Iwa already know all about jinchuuriki revivals, or Matatabi told him when we were fighting." Naruto didn't want to believe the second one, but he knew it was the more logical option. No one had ever revived a jinchuuriki that hadn't gone through an extraction before dying as far as he knew, so some random kid from Kumo knowing about seal theory that _he_ barely knew about was pretty farfetched.

Matatabi had been his friend, but she still seemed willing enough to lend her power to his opponent and bring the fight to him. Willing to go to the point of a suicide strike even. Had she really been his friend at all? Maybe she'd just been amused by the little mortal monkey spouting ideals at her.

Thinking of the hellcat brought a very important question to Naruto's mind, and he gave Sasuke a steely look. "What about the village? I know after five days we've probably got some reinforcements and a decent base camp set up, but how bad is the damage? Kurama and I tried to contain the blast."

Tense silence hung in the air.

" _Sasuke_."

"When we got here the place looked like someone had dropped a nuke." Sasuke hesitated before shaking his head. "There were no survivors."

Naruto pressed his hand to his leaking eyes. "Of course there weren't." And then he began to bitterly laugh.

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

To Koneko, the entire world Sasuke and Naruto came was wrong. She was so used to the subconscious thrum of chakra moving through reality that coming to a plane without it felt like being wrapped in cotton. Everything was missing just a touch of colour, everything was just a little bit muffled; and even the air seemed to be leeched clean of rich aromas.

But she hadn't been pulled across the void to complain about the lifelessness her destination, so Koneko kept her mouth shut and her opinions to herself.

"Now that Naruto's awake, we're going to be moving out. You should get ready for a midnight march." Sasuke huffed quietly as he came up behind the nekomata, the crunch of the black ash under his feet reaching her ears long before his voice did. "Here."

Koneko accepted the purple bandanna he shoved at her with a grimace, tying the cloth over her distinctive white hair and settling the hitae-ate over her brow. It had been recently washed, but she could still smell the faint scent of blood, making her suspect Sasuke had scrounged it off someone's corpse. "Does it fit?"

Unsettling red eyes that were ringed with dark sclera traced Koneko from head to toe, studying the makeshift shinobi outfit they'd constructed. While questions would be inevitably asked if she stuck around the Uchiha, suspicion would be delayed if the dimension-hopper looked like just another soldier under Sasuke's command.

"It'll do."

"Fine."

Having completed Koneko's disguise, Sasuke turned away and stared over the ebony wasteland with a desolate expression. A stranger wouldn't have noticed the slight downturn to his lips or the faint crease between his brows, especially with the winding cracks of resurrection marring his skin, but Koneko saw it clearly enough.

Asking him if he was alright seemed like a stupid question, so Koneko squared her shoulders and settled her amber gaze back on the desert Konoha had become. "They'll rebuild it." She declared, making an instinctive attempt at reassurance that she wasn't sure was even wanted.

Sasuke's agreement came in a nearly silent murmur that was snatched away by the evening breeze. A heartbeat passed before he gave a louder sigh. "But I'm not sure they should." A sort of bleak wistfulness brightened the crimson of his Sharingan. "Even if they try, they're not going to be able to get back what they lost."

The clinical othering in his miserable words caught Koneko's attention, and her shoulders drew tight with a mixture of relief and guilt. "Them?" she dared to question, watching as a dune of ash began to disintegrate in the distance. "Not we?" The thought that Sasuke might want to stay had crossed her mind from time to time, but she'd tried not to pay it any heed.

"No." Sasuke sounded as if he'd aged ten thousand years in a moment, remorse and nostalgia mingling on his tongue until his very breath was heavy with the tone of defeat. "I think I knew the moment we woke up here that we didn't belong anymore. Even Naruto is starting to realize that. This place no longer feels like home. And for me, I don't know if it ever did."

* * *

Valerie drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders, following faithfully at her King's heels like a determined bloodhound as they leapt through the trees.

As far as she'd been picked up from the camp gossip before they set out, they were travelling to resupply at an abandoned outpost that had once been owned by a man named Orochimaru before travelling northeast towards the Land of Lightning.

Those names meant nothing to Valerie, since she hadn't even bothered to glance at a map before rushing after Naruto. It didn't really matter to her where they were going, as long as she stayed by his side and made sure no one hurt him anymore.

To Valerie the land of shinobi that her King described had always seemed like a fairy tale. There were bold warriors and hateful villains in his stories, but good always beat evil. She knew what Naruto told her was a good-natured fib, but she hadn't thought reality would be so different.

She hadn't thought Naruto might almost die, surviving as a cripple that burnt through his youth in a single battle. He'd been in so much pain when he woke up, both physical and emotional, that it lit a quiet ember of rage in the blonde's breast.

Why did these stupid humans have to turn to Naruto to solve all their problems? Why couldn't they have just worked through whatever greedy squabble they had on their own without involving him? It didn't matter that they thought he was happily in the afterlife rather than happily in another world. They were greedy, short-sighted, and selfish either way.

"You know, if you think too hard your brain is going to start smoking." Naruto threw a grin over his shoulder at her, mouth pulling up into an attempt at reassurance despite the dark hollows of his cheeks and the corpse white streaks through his hair.

Valerie smiled back, ruby eyes dull with insincerity. "I'll try not to." They were pretending at happiness, pretending that nothing had changed despite the pain this world had rewoven into Naruto's heart.

Some fanatic shinobi had blown himself up, massacring hundreds of troops and tens of thousands of civilians, but it was Naruto who felt he needed to bear the burden of that bloodshed rather than laying it at Kumo's door where it belonged.

The smile on Naruto's lips went brittle, and Valerie knew that he'd seen through her poor lie. But rather than confront her, he merely tipped his head before turning away. It was just more evidence to Valerie that the shinobi world was draining the life out of her King.

Birdsong echoed as they ran on through the night, trees hills giving way to wet lowlands and rice paddies. Eventually dawn broke over the eastern horizon, and with a sharp whistle Sasuke urged the whole company to halt. "We're here."

Valerie grimaced as mud squeezed in though the open toes of her shinobi sandals, but she put the minor discomfort out of her mind as she moved to shield Naruto from any prying eyes. "Do you need water?" she offered, her hooded head bent low.

"Sure." Naruto accepted her canteen, gulping back a mouthful before passing it back to her. "You take the rest."

"I don't really need it. Rias made sure I was well… _watered_ before we came here." The euphemism would fly over the heads of any eavesdroppers, but Naruto knew about her blood hunger already.

Drawn as close as they were with the unyielding steel in Naruto's spine, to the rest of the shinobi it would look like Naruto was just having a private conversation with a pretty young woman. But Valerie took note of the grey pallor to her King's face and the faint trembling of his remaining hand, and she worried.

In her opinion Naruto needed a few weeks of rest to finish healing, but the blond had quietly told her before they set off that war waited for no man. Konoha was depending on Naruto, and he wasn't willing to let it down.

He was too selfless.

If she didn't love him so much for it, Valerie might scream with frustration. Would it kill him to maybe accept that he couldn't solve the whole world's problems? Because it was definitely going to kill him if he tried.

"There's a few scraps here and there, but it looks like they picked it clean when they swept through here after taking Orochimaru." Sasuke cut in, striding up with an idle hand resting on the hilt of his chokuto. The Uchiha considered Valerie with his unsettling undead scrutiny for a moment before looking back towards Naruto. "Orders came in by hawk. Sakura wants us to force a march right to the Yu-Shimo border before Kumo does. But it's up to you."

Naruto knuckled at his left eye, mouth twisted into a fierce frown. "Meaning if I don't feel up to it, we won't, because there's nobody around that can make us do it, yeah?" Snorting at the thought, the greyed blond shook his head. "No, I'm not going to drag us down. Tell them that they've got an hour to rest, because after that we're going right to Kaminari no Kuni. I'm not dragging this out any more than I have to."

Sasuke hummed noncommittally, a wary expression on his face as he studied Naruto. "If you're sure." Then he spun about, stalking back towards the faceless crowd with a stiff back and a silent Koneko plodding after him.

Without the brief distraction Sasuke provided, the two blonds fell into an uneasy silence. "You know, Val, you don't have to run around after me." Naruto scratched the bridge of his nose pensively. "Things are gonna get pretty violent from here until its all settled. No one would think less of you if you wanted to hole up some place until all the fighting's over."

"I would think less of myself." The dhampir instantly refused, threading her dainty fingers together as she latched a deliberate narrow stare on her King's empty sleeve. "You're right. I don't like violence. But I'm not a child like Gasper is, so please don't send me away."

Valerie wasn't like Ravel or even like Koneko. If Naruto didn't want her around then she wouldn't force herself on him to ease her own worries. A servant swore to follow the orders they were given, every last one of them, and she didn't want to give Naruto a reason to throw her away. But just because she would obey didn't mean she wanted to.

Holding her breath, she waited, and just when the silence seemed unbearable the protective clench to Naruto's jaw relaxed. "I suppose I couldn't expect you to do something I wouldn't. Just remember that some of the people we're going against are pretty strong. Strong enough to kill a devil. So be careful, okay?"

For the first time since she'd step into this hellish world, Valerie found her face slipping into a real smile. And maybe it was a reaction to her sincerity, or maybe it was just her imagination, but it seemed like the heavy cloud of despair that had hung around Naruto for the past day was finally lightening.

* * *

Phantom pain thrummed in the empty space where his right arm had been, but Naruto forced it down as he stepped over the ice coated grass of midnight Shimo no Kuni. He had no time to spend drowning in self-pity when a war was riding on his shoulders.

Peripherally, Naruto was aware of the tired grumblings of the men that Gaara and Sakura put under his command. The long march was draining even him, and the girls weren't doing much better. Only Sasuke, undead creature that he was, seemed unaffected by the long march and the chill that turned every exhaled breath into white mist.

Naruto guessed, based on hazy decades old memories of the landscape before the Fourth Shinobi World War, that they'd hit the border of Lightning Country just after dawn. After that it was a gamble to see if A and Killer B would march out to meet them or if he and Sasuke would need to stomp right into Kumogakure itself.

Once they took Kumo out of the war Iwa would probably fold, since the former was much more powerful after managing to get six – five now after the clusterfuck in Konoha – bijuu in its arsenal. That wasn't even mentioning the fact that Kurotsuchi was more flexible than A or Onoki. If he gave her a reason to come to the table and talk it out, Naruto believed she would.

Rationally, open war couldn't go on much longer, and Naruto clung to that hope like a drowning man. He never wanted to wake up against with ash on his tongue and the knowledge that he'd failed so miserably. Kurama quietly pointing out that if Naruto had been ruthless enough to go for the kill from the start he could have prevented it made the whole thing even worse.

" _ **That's just the way the world works, Naruto."**_

" _Not now, Kurama. Just not now, okay?"_ The blond shot back irritably, the crunch of ice under his heels intensifying as he took out his frustration on the frozen ground. He didn't want to hear Kurama ranting on about how he should just go for the throat the next time he got in a fight. That wasn't his way.

" _ **And if not now, then when? Humans rule each other through violence. The losers are exploited, enslaved, and killed. That's the way the world works. That's the way it always has, and that's the way it's always going to be."**_

" _So what, you think I should just start murdering everyone that disagrees with me? That kind of world isn't even worth living in."_

Orange chakra curled warmly under Naruto's skin, bringing a pink flush of life to the jinchuuriki's cheeks as the Kyuubi prowled through his container's mindscape. _**"You're just like the old man was, Naruto. And I'm going to tell you now – I loved that old man, but Indra did get one thing right. Peace is something that can't exist without sacrifice and the power to enforce it. Isn't humanity's constant state of war proof of that? Good intentions aren't enough."**_

" _If you won't even consider that the world can change, it never will."_ Naruto hadn't fought so hard against Madara to in the end become him. He wanted to bring life to the beliefs of Jiraiya-sensei, not the beliefs of Kaguya.

" _ **And what happens with the Raikage refuses to back down? Are you going to force him to the table and try to create peace through understanding again? Are you going to have the strength to kill him if it comes to that? And even then, the fact that you need to resort to violence at all proves the failure of your ideals."**_

Stung by the blunt assertion by someone he'd thought would have his back, Naruto bit his tongue until it bled and shoved Kurama's mental presence away. The loss of the bijuu's chakra let the cold seep back into his bones, but the iciness was welcome company compared to the sharp burn of anger.

But of course, Kurama wasn't willing to let him have the last laugh.

" _ **One day, either here or in Gehenna, you'll learn Naruto. The ruthlessness to do what's needed for the cause is a necessary quality in a ruler."**_

"Fuck off."

"What did you say, dobe?"

"Nothing!" Naruto spat, turning away from Sasuke's inquiring expression as he leapt over the snow-crowned hills with his friends at his side. Explaining the whole stupid little argument with Kurama was pointless. They'd already decided what they were going to do to try and heal the land before going back to Sheol, and Kurama was at best a third party to the future of the shinobi system.

The jinchuuriki ignored the niggling suspicion in the back of his mind that if he explained the whole conversation Sasuke would agree with Kurama. They'd already had a battle over their ideals once, he didn't want to do it again.

* * *

Death was on the cold crisp wind. In his mind, he wanted to give it a pleasant scent. Something sweet and flowery with the sugar of heaven, maybe.

As age turned the trim lines of his body into weathered muscle and deep wrinkles, Killer B found himself speaking less and listening more. His self-made rap had dwindled to nothing, and now days could pass in utter silence without even a word from Gyuuki. It sounded lonely, but Killer B wouldn't describe it like that.

It was more like they'd made their peace with the inevitable end, so spouting hot air wasn't needed anymore.

Killer B wordlessly met his brother's gaze through the dark lenses of his sunglasses, and with a final nod to each other the two warriors of an older era slipped through the gates of Kumogakure. Just like with Gyuki, Killer B didn't need to ask A what was on his mind. They knew each other too well for things like that.

When word had reached Kumogakure that they weren't just facing the Kyuubi, but a resurrected Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke, they'd both known the war was lost. Twenty years of struggle and dominance were swept out to sea by the one revelation. Twenty years of blood and cruelty on top of earlier decades of blood and cruelty. They'd done it for the sake of the village, without hesitation, but now they were tired.

"I hope that those kids don't decide to come after us." Killer B finally spoke, voice raspy from long disuse as they raced through the darkness. "It's not like I ever told them they needed to toe the party line, bro. Ordering them to stay isn't enough."

When Kumo had decided to strike first and recapture the bijuu, they'd ended up with five squalling babies that were promptly dumped in Killer B's lap to raise.

It hadn't been easy, what with the crying and the pooping and the teenage rebellion, but in the end Killer B was proud of them. Proud even when word came that Green D had gone wild and annihilated Konoha, because despite that horror the boy had still been like his own son.

"They won't." A declared softly, booted feet scraping over grey stones and moss. He didn't offer any other explanation, but Killer B didn't need one. He trusted his brother when the man said it had been taken care of. Maybe the kids had been drugged or maybe they were sealed up by fuuinjutsu masters, either way would be fine as long as they stayed back home.

Naruto had risen from the grave to take his pound of flesh from the world that had failed him, so the old men would pay the toll and hope it would wash the slate clean. There was no need for the younger generations to get involved. The past needed to be laid to rest before the future could begin.


	8. Chapter 8

The golden sunlight blazed as it reflected off the pure white snowbanks, making Valerie wince and shield herself against the glare. The dhampir-turned-devil wasn't going to burst into flame at the sight, but her eyes were still more sensitive than any mortal man's. Some in the Church suggested the vampiric sensitivity to the sun was because they were cursed. The vampires themselves just claimed it was part of their evolution as nocturnal hunters.

With Sephiroth Graal constantly whispering in the back of her head, Valerie wondered if there wasn't a little bit of truth to both.

"Why are we stopping?" Valerie asked Sasuke, peering up the frost-bound hill as Naruto slowly ascended alone and unaided. Her King had ordered them all to let him go on by himself before starting his trek up the frozen hills.

An undead crimson gaze shuttered in exasperation, frustration visibly twisting the Uchiha's face as he stared up after Naruto. "A few of his old 'friends' are coming. He wanted to talk to them alone."

Despite the annoyance sharpening Sasuke's words, Valerie was pretty sure his anger wasn't directed at her. She'd never really given Sasuke a reason to be upset with her.

Ice crunched as Koneko shoved her way forward, nose wrinkled with distaste as a concealed dip in the terrain brought the snow up to her knees. "You should go." The nekomata advised, slapping a handful of white powder away from her waist. "Before he sells us all to the circus."

"It would be counterproductive."

Koneko's roundabout assertion that Sasuke had just as much right to be negotiating as Naruto was one Valerie disagreed with. Valerie didn't dislike the Uchiha, but he wasn't as strong or as determined as her King.

But she did understand Koneko's loyalty.

Naruto's voice rose into an indistinct murmur as the blond waved his remaining hand at a pair of dark-skinned men that appeared on the mountainous horizon. The man on the left was swaddled up in white and yellow robes, while the one on the right sported sunglasses and a black kimono.

The trio watched warily as the Raikage and his brother slowly made their way over to the jinchuuriki, stomping through the snow until they stood tall and unbent before the scarred blond.

The tension was thick enough to be cut with a knife as the entire expeditionary force waited for the slightest sign of hostility from the Kumo-nin. More than one face burned with unyielding hatred, to the point that Valerie knew most of their so-called comrades were waiting for an excuse to start a fight. Peace wouldn't come easily to those kind of men. One way or another, the rivers would be running red.

Chewing anxiously at the inside of her cheek, Valerie turned to Sasuke and repeated the Rook's suggestion. "You really should go up there, even if Naruto wants to talk to them alone." If a fight did break out she didn't want her King to be caught standing alone right next to a pair of ninja whose strength was supposedly legendary. Sasuke wasn't her King, but he was powerful, especially in this world. "Please."

They weren't really close enough that she'd feel comfortable making personal requests of him, which was why it surprised Valerie when Sasuke just exhaled irritably and started trudging his way up the frosted hill without a word of argument. She'd thought he would need a little more begging than that.

"I hope you don't try to suggest we go up there too." Koneko warned coolly, the ochre tint of her eyes piercing as she studied the dhampir. The implication that she'd have found the proposal utterly moronic was hardly subtle.

Without the buffer of the rest of their companions, Valerie was exposed to the brunt of Koneko's chilly regard, and it made her wilt a bit. "Of course not." The blonde reassured the pale-haired girl, waving away the idea vigorously. "We're just strangers here. Sasuke and Naruto know these people and know how to deal with them. We just need to stay out of the way until it's time to go back home."

That just prompted an amused snort from Koneko. "That's one way to put it. But making Sasuke your negotiator isn't the smartest move."

"Excuse me?" Valerie's eyebrows climbed upwards.

"Sasuke cut the one on the left's arm off and tried to sell the other one off to a homicidal maniac as a human sacrifice. They're not exactly best friends."

" _What_?"

* * *

Sakura rubbed her fingers, the mixture of glass and ash that made up the Konoha landscape grinding away against the callouses on her skin. Everything had been reduced to fire and ruin. With Yamato long dead it would be years if not decades before they could restore the life and greenery to her homeland.

The destruction of Konoha was just one more grievance in a long line, reinforcing her resolution. Kumo and Iwa could never be forgiven, and their crimes could never be forgotten. One way or another, they'd get their pound of flesh.

She wondered if this was how Sasuke felt when Itachi drew the curtain on the Uchiha clan that bloody night so long ago.

Rising back to her feet, Sakura brushed the dirt from her faded cheongsam before turning to Shikamaru. "How soon will Kiri get involved?" she demanded without preamble, stalking back towards the tent city that had been erected by Leaf-nin eager to reclaim their village. To think that a few hours ago she'd been one of them, still full of hope and energy.

Coughing harshly into his fist, Shikamaru spat out a wad of yellow phlegm before shaking his head. " _If_ they get involved, don't you mean? They've done pretty well for themselves sitting on the fence."

Sakura narrowed her eyes into a poison green glare. "Don't play games with me, Nara." The Hokage had very little tolerance for bullshitting at the best of times, and with the ruins of Konoha surrounding them she wasn't exactly in a joking mood.

Schooling his face into neutrality, Shikamaru shrugged lightly. "It depends on a lot of things. If Naruto and Sasuke get stalemated, they'll sit and watch. If those two keep bulldozing their way to Kumo, I'd expect Kiri to declare war on Iwa by the end of the week. I wouldn't worry too much about it. We don't need them and the probability they'd declare war on us is so small it's essentially nonexistent."

In the end, Sakura couldn't find any points in his assessment to disagree with. It wasn't exactly a secret that the northern alliance had been throwing its weight around after the destruction of Konoha, and in doing so they'd alienated a lot of the smaller villages and the only 'neutral' great power left. Supporting the northern alliance wasn't in Kiri's best interests.

More than one village council was probably sitting at the edges of their seats drooling as power on the continent was rebalanced. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie but few were willing to spend the blood and treasure needed to buy it fairly.

Kiri wasn't Sakura's real concern anyway. As long as Sasuke and Naruto didn't turn their backs on Konoha, they could take on the rest of the world and win. Which was the rub. "You saw them more often than the rest of us put together did before the invasion. Do you think they're determined enough?"

It wasn't exactly the most subtle of questions, and the fact that Shikamaru just looked at her with his inscrutable dark gaze without answer made Sakura's blood run cold.

Once the pair were safely hidden away in the command tent with the rotating remnants of ANBU standing guard outside, Shikamaru scrabbled for a cigarette and lit up. "Do you want me to make it pretty for you or just give it to you quick and dirty?"

"Just tell me straight." Sakura muttered, sweeping around the battered table and peering down at the yellowed maps that were spread out and marked with troop movements. "Don't beat around the bush." After the downfall of Konoha she wasn't the sort of person to mince words. The death of her country had been the final nail in the coffin of the bubbly little girl she'd once been.

Giving Sakura a wry look that clearly implied she was asking for it, Shikamaru tapped an idle finger against the diamond marking the front pushing into Shimo no Kuni. "Sasuke is at any given moment three steps away from telling us to fuck off. Maybe he just liked being dead, who knows? But he isn't invested in the war and if Naruto wasn't here then he wouldn't bother with us."

Which was just about what Sakura had expected, to be honest. After the clusterfuck that led up to the Uchiha Clan massacre Sasuke was never going to be the blind patriot Itachi had been. Reluctant protection was the best they could have hoped for from him. It wasn't ideal but as long as Sasuke didn't end up as Konoha's enemy again she could work with it. "And Naruto?"

Shikamaru spent much longer digesting that query, even bringing up his hands into his so-called 'thinking pose' as he mulled it over. "It's hard to say." He admitted after a long moment passed, the crow's feet around his eyes tightening in thought. "We all have personal experience with Naruto's particular brand of… doggedness."

"But?" Sakura prodded.

"But he's different." The shadowbinder frowned like he'd bitten into a lemon. "It's like he's just going through the motions. Like he's doing what he thinks he _should_ do, rather than what he actually _wants_ to do. Maybe death had a greater effect on him than we expected."

Sakura grunted her agreement. She'd seen it herself in the handful of times that she'd actually spoken to Naruto since pulling him out of the grave. Her old friend didn't have the same drive he'd once had, which was convenient if it came to sidelining him out after any peace agreement but less useful on the battlefield. It was almost like when they'd resurrected Naruto they hadn't summoned all of him. Like something had been left behind.

"That could be a problem."

* * *

The taste of winter was in Naruto's mouth, but that cold bite was nothing next to the shattered feeling in his chest. It felt like someone had taken a blade to his heart and mangled it until nothing was left but bloody meat and raw sinews. Physically he was fine, but spiritually he was bleeding.

The blond just couldn't understand why they'd turned their backs on him. Sure, rationally, he could see why A and Killer B might feel pressured into breaking their shared dreams. Cynical people gave up too quickly and too easily on what was good and clean in the world. Sasuke had been a prime example of that sort of mentality before Naruto beat it out of him.

But coming up with a handful of excuses in the back of his mind while trudging across Fire Country was one thing. Actually coming face to face with his old comrades and seeing the darkness that resignation and 'pragmatism' had carved into their souls was another. All he could cough out with a single broken question. "Why?"

Why did they turn their backs on him? Why did they abandon their shared dreams? Why did they flood the land with blood and slaughter? Why didn't they believe in him anymore?

Killer B pursed his lips, brown eyes pensive as they dropped to the ground in shame. Of the two of them, his betrayal hurt Naruto far more. But in the end it was the Raikage, and not Naruto's fellow jinchuuriki that broke the silence. "Because we had to."

Naruto almost punched the elderly Kage in the face for that, but they were all distracted by Sasuke's sudden arrival.

"Raikage." Twenty years ago the hostility between Sasuke and Kumogakure's leader would have been thick enough to choke, but it seemed like time and death had reduced them to a watchful neutrality. "Killer B. Naruto."

A small part of Naruto wanted to demand Sasuke give him a bit of privacy with his old friends, as they'd agreed, but the larger part of him was just glad for the sudden show of silent support. It steadied the jittering shards of his heart into orderly fragments.

"You didn't have to." Naruto denied, resuming the conversation with Sasuke at his back. "We knew it was gonna be hard, but we all knew it was gonna take sacrifices. So just cut the bullshit, alright?"

The bitter accusation in Naruto's tone made Killer B wilt, but it sparked a touch of defiance in A and the man stood taller. "It wasn't about being _hard_. We could have worked through something that was hard. It was about being impossible. I fought off forty-three assassination attempts before I started questioning if we could actually achieve peace without you. Don't blame us for failing when you couldn't even keep yourself alive to see it through."

A threw Naruto's fury right back in his face, stoking an even heavier burn of anger in the jinchuurki's gullet. "It's not like I asked to get my head cut off." he bit out, shoving back the memory of the guilt he'd felt when he realized the comfort of his new life was bought by the suffering in his old one. Easy life in Gehenna or not, it didn't justify all the war and murder.

"We didn't think you did." Killer B spoke up for the first time, his deep voice absent of the rolling rhyme of his youth. He sounded nothing like a reckless rebel Naruto had once known. "But without you everyone lost faith. They didn't see a way to get to that future you promised without you."

It was the admission of utter hopelessness that finally took the wind out of Naruto's sails, pouring water on the fire of his rage. "That's not an excuse." He sighed, breath misting into the air with his exhale. "All you had to do was keep _trying_. There were always gonna be those people that couldn't let go of hate and revenge. We knew that even when we were fighting Kaguya. It wasn't going to be perfect, but it could've been better than _this_."

' _This'_ being another generation of hate and violence, with gore running through the cracks of their hearts and vengeance on every tongue. So much suffering, and for what? Pride? Money? Land?

"There's a difference between a couple of terrorists and civil war, Naruto." A chuckled bitterly, the veins in the hollow of his throat shifting. He'd already been an older man during the Fourth Great Shinobi War, but the wrinkles and liver spots made him seem like a hidebound centenarian. "No one was hiring shinobi anymore, and your naïve fantasy doesn't put food in the belly."

Naruto's lip curled back in disgust. "So you figured there was going to be blood either way, and better for it to be everyone else than you? Did you even try to find other things for shinobi to do but kill each other?"

The white folds of the Raikage's robes rustled as he hooked a thumb in his belt and sneered. "And what exactly do you think is a good career choice for a man that's spent his entire life killing for money? Most shinobi just aren't good for anything else." Every word was a tired exercise in pessimism.

At some point the thick taste of copper and blood had exploded over Naruto's tongue, but he couldn't pinpoint exactly when he'd bitten into the inside of his cheek. He was too busy trying to knuckle away the pounding headache building in his temples. "Just… shut up, okay? We'll fix this. Just call for peace and we'll get around the table and hammer something out. I'm not happy but we can still fix this before it gets even worse."

"No." The simple denial Killer B offered was unexpected, reigniting the simmering tension into a blazing boil.

Silence hung for a moment before Naruto squared his shoulders, his mien shifting from disappointed friend to implacable enemy. "What do you mean, _no_?" he questioned, deceptively soft. All the tangled up hurt and mercy drained out of him, leaving nothing behind but diamond determination. The blond's phantom limb burned. Did they think that he wasn't strong enough to fight them? Naruto didn't want to hurt anyone, but he was more than willing to kick some ass if he had to.

In contrast to Naruto's rising aggression, it seemed like that last dregs of pride fell away from the Kumo-nin. Neither of them seemed willing to meet his eyes, but eventually Killer B pursed his lips and raised his head. "We're tired, Naruto. It's time for a new generation to step up, which ain't gonna happen until we're out of the way. Darui already knows what we want him to do."

Disbelief made all the muscles of Naruto's face go slack. "What?" He struggled to comprehend just what exactly they wanted from him. It just didn't make sense. They couldn't…

Surely not. " _What_?"

"We're _tired_."

Tired but unwilling to surrender. Tired, but still searching for that crimson blaze of glory and honor. All it would need was for Naruto to stain his fingers with scarlet sin.

Viscerally, he refused. He'd fight if he had to, for the sake of the future. But fighting to satisfy the pride and masochism of his old comrades? What they were asking for make Naruto recoil, his right hand fisting in denial.

Perhaps that was the last straw.

"Fine then." Sasuke cut in coldly, settling on hand on the hilt of his chokuto and pinning the two Kumogakure shinobi with his spinning pinwheel gaze. For the first time since his resurrection the Rinnegan burned in his left eye, and naked steel shone under the dawn sunlight as he drew his blade. "I'll end it for you."

* * *


	9. Chapter 9

There was only a split second between Sasuke's ominous declaration and the sudden rage of blood and thunder that shattered the morning. The Uchiha and the Raikage were racing across the hilltops, clashing steel and lightning even as Killer B wreathed himself in red chakra and threw a lariat at Naruto.

Caught off guard but still agile enough to make up the difference, Naruto lunged under Killer B's arm in a full body tackle that brought both jinchuuriki down to scrabble in the snow.

The blond's own chakra cloak bubbled up out of his pores and struggled for supremacy while Naruto kneed Killer B in the stomach and surged back to his feet. "Damn it, B! This isn't a fucking game!"

"No." Killer B nodded once, the red swirl of chakra intensifying around him. "It's not." Then his skin peeled away, the scent of burnt copper and iron thickening in the air as he drew on more and more of Gyuki's power. The time for talking and compromising had passed.

It was time for adrenaline and violence.

The air echoed with a subsonic boom as B stepped forward, ice and rock shattering away from the force of his launch. His heavy fists weaved from side to side, deflected desperately by the frantic motion of Naruto's one remaining hand.

"Sir!" A pair of Konoha jounin screamed, blazing up the hill even as Naruto roared at them to get back. They moved with enough speed to make Kakashi jealous, dark steel clenched in their hands as they circled around to come at Killer B's flanks.

Naruto cursed under his breath, grabbing at Killer B's left wrist while bringing his leg up in an attempt to sink his foot into the slightly flabby flesh of Killer B's gut. "Get the hell out of here!"

Unlike Naruto, the dime a dozen shinobi churned out to fill the ranks were just meat shields when it came to fighting someone like Killer B. And it showed when the once-rapper pulled back so he could effortlessly spin like a top, reducing both his would be attackers to mist and mincemeat.

At that moment, a tidal wave of rage hit Naruto so strongly his vision went dark. Maybe it was the stress of having had to march for days to meet a couple of friends that had stabbed him in the back. Maybe it was because through death and life in Gehenna and resurrection Naruto had lost a piece of himself. Maybe it was the sea of blood he was already swimming in because of having agreed to fight a war for Konoha. The blond didn't know.

All Naruto knew was that when his senses flooded back in he was wrapped up in the warm golden orange of his Kyuubi Chakra Mode, heat thrumming in his veins as he backhanded Killer B so hard a tooth went flying.

"You want to get your ass kicked?" Naruto growled out gutturally, fists forming out of Kurama's liquid chakra and pummeling into his fellow jinchuuriki. "Fine!"

Soil and snow kicked up as Naruto and Killer B collided, all fire and fury as they surrendered to the bloodthirsty instinct in their veins. They were monsters born and bred for war, and it showed as they escalated from trading fists to rampaging along the nearest mountainside in their bijuu forms.

Naruto slammed a paw against a granite plateau, steadying himself as Kurama's throat rippled and swelled with a bijuudama.

If Killer B wanted a fight he'd get one. Naruto would break every stubborn bone in his body until the fucking moron was ready to sit down and _listen_.

Flaming orange jaws opened with a crack, and then the air was full of heat and light.

* * *

There was fire and lightning on the horizon, blazing so bright it drowned out the midday sun, and Koneko thinned her lips at the sight. "Stay put."

It wasn't the first time she'd had to order the fretting Valerie to not get involved in what looked to be a battle of the titans, and Koneko doubted it would be the last. There seemed to be no lull in the rage of combat, and as the hours dragged on it only grew more intense.

Conceptually, she'd had a vague understanding of the strength Naruto and Sasuke had in this world. But to actually _see_ it took Koneko's breath away. Suddenly it became utterly clear the kind of power the two were able to muster in their original forms. A level of might that was beyond them in Gehenna.

Before today Koneko hadn't really known what they were giving up. The sheer difference between what her friends could do in Gehenna versus what they could do in their homeland was large enough to give her goosebumps.

"But they could be getting hurt!"

Koneko imagined for a brief second what it would be like to meet up with her mad, murderous sister again and wrap her hands around that pale throat. The idea that anyone else would choke the life out of Kuroka set her teeth on edge. That revenge belonged to her and no one else, which is why she understood what Sasuke and Naruto were feeling.

"Sometimes, a fight is about more than just winning." The nekomata stated cryptically, crossing her arms and continuing to watch the clash of elements.

A dissatisfied sound rumbled in Valerie's throat, but the blonde let the issue drop for another few minutes.

Off to the west the two young women could see white lightning bolts arcing through the air like some giant mobile tesla coil. It was a storm come to earth wandering the mountains of Shimo no Kuni, crackling just beyond the edge of mortal hearing.

To the north there seemed to be an enormous sea of orange flame, rippling and twisting like a wild thing. More than once Koneko had heard the shinobi marvel at it like the ignorant apes they were, never having seen the majestic conjurations of their betters before.

Suddenly an echoing shriek filled the air, making Koneko slap her hands over her ears and grimace at the high-pitched howl. " _What_ is that?" she wondered, knowing that even as she spoke the raging wind stole the words from her mouth. Gold eyes tracked towards the dying sunlight, and then Koneko forgot to breathe.

An enormous pillar of pale light kilometers wide blazed, stretching up towards the heavens like some reborn god trying to regain the skies. It wasn't electricity so much as pure plasma, energy condensed so tightly that it seemed like it was physically tangible.

"Blood and bone." Valerie whispered as the colossal display of furious supremacy died away, leaving a hole in the clouds so wide that even the two devils couldn't see the far side of it.

One battle had ended, and within the hour Koneko saw Sasuke plodding back towards their group from the western hilltops.

Blood coated Sasuke's left arm from his shoulder to his fingertips, dark and congealed in the chilly air. "It's done." He muttered when he came into earshot, his eyes still shimmering crimson and violet. He was the very picture of a victorious warlord returning from the battlefield, and it was enough to spark hearty cheers from the ragtag band of Konoha ninja.

The cries of joy from the Konoha shinobi were loud enough to deafen Koneko and make her wince in annoyance, but those irritants were easily dismissed.

What wasn't so simply brushed off was the way that Sasuke tore his own arm off at the shoulder, throwing the bloodstained limb away into the snowbanks to disintegrate beneath their collective gazes.

It was a gesture of self-destruction that Koneko didn't know how to deal with.

Rias might have resorted to words at that moment, seeing the tense crinkle of Sasuke's undead eyes and drawing out his secrets one by one with her soft cajoling.

But Koneko wasn't Rias, so when she realized that Sasuke wasn't alright the only thing she could do was saunter closer to his body of gravedirt, pressing shoulder to shoulder as they watched Naruto's struggle in the distance. "Will he be much longer?"

"Who knows?" Sasuke shot back flippantly, his arm reforming out of ragged strips of paper. "It'll end when he wants it to." That sounded almost like a bitter recrimination to her ears, and Koneko realized that despite the steely way Sasuke dealt with his past even he wasn't unaffected.

To Sasuke the entire ninja world was the first bitter reality that had borne him, shaping every hope and trimming every dream with gore and chakra. To Koneko it was just an irritating sideshow, pulling her comrades away from Gehenna and demanding undue blood and sacrifice.

"I hate this." Koneko confessed, knee deep in the snow and selfishly wishing that Ophis had stolen the memories of their past lives from Naruto and Sasuke. They were too far from home, surrounded by strangers and expected to sweat and bleed for the sake of fleeting humans.

Sasuke's admission was heavy, as if he spoke to more than the Rook alone when he sighed. "So do I."

* * *

The stink of blood was so heavy in the air that Naruto wanted to gag. It was a cloying scent, threading down his throat and choking him until he could think of nothing else. But despite the thick smell of death, the blond knew that it easily brushed aside.

Easily ignored compared to the wet muscle that trapped Naruto's elbow anyway.

"You fucking asshole." Naruto croaked, his tongue stiff in his mouth as he stared down at a pair of guileless dark eyes. "I should have known you'd do something like this."

Blood stained Killer B's white teeth as he grinned despite the crippling pain in his chest. "It's alright kiddo. It's alright." Considering the way Naruto's Rasengan had torn through him it was a wonder the dark-skinned man could even speak. Then again, Killer B had always been a pretty tough old bastard.

Distantly Naruto could taste the mingled blood spatter and tears on his lips, copper and salt threading together. "Go easy." he rasped, blinking through the wetness blurring his vision. "Just try and go easy." Even now it wasn't too late to live, if Killer B was willing to fight through the pain of bijuu rejuvenation.

But Naruto knew what an unyielding and terrible resolve looked like, and so he knew that particular hope was smothered in the cradle.

A cool palm settled over the blond's shoulder, squeezing once faintly in reassurance before falling away with sickening finality. The sudden drop of weight on his arm pulled Naruto down to his knees in the snow.

Killer B went slack, and with a shuddering gasp Naruto knew the man couldn't be hurt anymore. "Asshole." he repeated, trying not to think too hard about the way the gore clung to his skin as he pulled his arm free. "Asshole."

It had been so easy to fall back into his old habits. Naruto had practically made it his calling in his first life to beat the sense into people. On some level, even though he'd been feeling off since his rebirth, he'd expected to do the same to Killer B.

Naruto had never expected the Hachibi's jinchuuriki to drop his guard at the last moment, choosing to take a Rasengan right through the lung and then refusing healing. He'd never expected that kind of fatalism from the rapper, and he'd never expected Gyuuki to allow it.

"I hate this." Naruto whispered, clutching at his greying mane with blood-slicked fingers. "Why is this happening?"

 **"It's time to go back, Naruto."** Kurama's usually booming voice had been lowered to a quiet rumble, and silent grief thrummed between them like a live wire. **"Get up."**  
  
With a last heaving sigh, Naruto stumbled to his feet and turned to the south. Every plodding step he took felt like some momentous effort, sorrow and anger sharpening the breath in his lungs to shards of glass. He had no idea what he was supposed to do now.

All Naruto could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other, hoping that it might lead him to some place worth being. Some place where it didn't feel like his heart was dying.

* * *

It wasn't until the sun was setting that Naruto appeared on the northern snowy ridges, his golden hair burning beneath the dusk like a primordial flame.

The sight spurred a dozen cheers from the faceless shinobi that made up Konoha's advance force, and Sasuke knew each and every one of them was ignorant. They only saw the victory that the jinchuuriki bore, not recognizing the devastation or bitterness twisting Naruto's face. But Sasuke saw it, and he understood.

"We shouldn't have come back." The undead Uchiha confessed to the night air, shifting with a crackle of porcelain and bone.

A Naruto that had never encountered the failure of hope was a familiar Naruto that Sasuke knew how to deal with. The new Naruto that had anger and desolation in his eyes was something else entirely.

Sparing a sidelong glance towards the tent that Koneko and Valerie had huddled up in, Sasuke clenched his jaw and moved forward through the snow drifts. It was good that the girls were sheltering from the wind, since he knew his friend needed something the two devils couldn't provide, and there was an instinctive common tongue that existed between those who killed former comrades. "Dobe."

"Bastard." Naruto greeted stonily, the wrinkles of premature age deepening around his mouth as he pursed his lips. It seemed for a moment as if the jinchuuriki would continue speaking, but after a few silent seconds Naruto just defensively hunched his shoulders and moved to stand next to Sasuke.

Words wouldn't come easily that night, with grief and murder so fresh that Naruto could probably still smell the stink. Sasuke certainly could, even though he knew the aroma was only a construct of his fevered mind rather than his unfeeling body.

"There's some sake in the stores." He offered, knowing how tempting the oblivion alcohol would provide must be. Sasuke had taken the booze from the ruins of Otogakure on the passage north despite knowing it might be bad for troop discipline, and Sasuke faintly wondered if he'd had some touch of foresight then. Maybe on an instinctive level he'd expected something like today.

Naruto hummed lowly in comprehension but made no move to abandon their shared vigil. "I didn't burn him." He muttered, his hand twitching slightly. "I didn't…"

Snow crunched as Sasuke took a step forward, half turning so that the purple of his Rinnegan gaze glittered under the first rays of moonlight. "I'll do it." Unlike Naruto he needed no sleep, and a few hours roaming the icy slopes in search of Killer B's remains would do him no harm. A funeral pyre was the least he could do for a man that had asked for clemency during his trial all those years ago.

After the fiasco of the Fourth Shinobi World War it had become standard practice to burn all corpses to prevent resurrection. When Sasuke had finally cut down the Raikage after giving the man the battle he wanted, he'd wasted no time cremating A via Amaterasu. The fact that Naruto had forgotten to do it for Killer B just showed how off balance his friend was becoming.

A brief moment of defiance lit a fire in Naruto's azure stare, bringing back a faint flicker of life before guttering out again. "Alright." He sighed throatily, turning away and slinking off in the direction of the supply tent. Morning would eventually come and demand he be awake and aware, but until then Naruto firmly intended to be senselessly drunk.

Watching until Naruto disappeared through the tent flaps, Sasuke frowned and began his journey north.

The wetness soaking his pants and the howling wind tearing at his hair didn't bother Sasuke, even when he crowned the third ridge and ending up twisting his ankle between two boulders. It was beyond him to feel any kind of physical discomfort, creature of death and forbidden sacrifice that he was.

The only pain Sasuke could feel was his own rage and regret whipping at his soul like chains of ice.

Rationally he knew it was a tactically smart move to revive them, but he wished that Sakura hadn't been so determined to win. They didn't belong in this world anymore and finding themselves still responsible for solving all its problems made him tired on some intrinsic level.

It was like they were fighting for a lost cause, maintaining a false victory out of sheer willpower. Peace had come to the land, but only when Naruto and Sasuke were there to enforce it. Without them as the lynchpin everything simply crumbled to dust.

Why couldn't the shinobi handle their own issues? Why did it fall to Naruto and him to keep clawing their way back up to the top with chakra and might so that they could force people to stop killing each other for petty reasons? Sasuke knew that the nature of all living beings was conflict, and that logically he couldn't expect anything else from them, but it still weighed on him.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."

The quote from one of the plays Yuuto had been obsessing over a few months back came unbidden to his lips, and Sasuke was struck by a sudden and fierce longing to just go back _home_. He missed his makeshift family in Gehenna. He missed Akeno's perverted teasing. He missed Koneko's demands that he play another video game with her. He missed his chess matches with Rias and he missed training with Yuuto. He even missed the way Gasper insisted on calling him 'sir'.

Sasuke had been born in the world of shinobi, but every day that passed made the sense of alienation in his heart grow deeper. He felt like a stranger in a strange land, looking for hints of familiarity like a man searches for water in a desert. He didn't want to fight for Konoha anymore, and he suspected that after killing people they'd once called comrades Naruto didn't either.


	10. Chapter 10

The weight of his sparkling new hitai-ate seemed to burn across Naruto's forehead, squeezing tight like an infernal brand. For his entire career as a shinobi he'd proudly proclaimed his allegiance to Konoha and his willingness to fight for her, but for some reason it just felt _wrong_ now. As if despite his childhood he really didn't have any business with them anymore.

Frowning at his aged face in the mirror, Naruto ran a considering thumb across the swirl engraved in the dull steel. "I wonder..." he murmured, slipping it off and tossing Sakura's latest gift in the corner of the room where it landed with a clatter. "What do you think?"

Valerie looked up from the purple scarf she was knitting, tilting her head in consideration before giving a soft smile. "I think you look perfectly handsome either way, so it's up to you."

That was a non-answer if Naruto ever heard one, but he let the vague compliment wash over him anyway. He could use a bit of ego stroking in times like this.

"Okay." Naruto declared, rubbing at the bridge of his nose awkwardly. "I'm just gonna head out now. I don't wanna tell you that you _have_ to do anything, but eh, you know…"

"It's alright. Koneko and I both know that it's best if we stay out of sight in the rooms so that questions aren't asked. You're not going to upset me just by reminding me of it." The dhampir trailed her sympathetic crimson gaze over the stiff new flak jacket her king had been stuffed into. "I'm more worried about you."

Averting his eyes, Naruto coughed a few vague excuses into his fist before slipping from the room. Valerie meant well, but he just didn't really want to talk about something like his _feelings_. He barely understood them himself, feeling like he was drowning a little deeper every day in some ink-dark ocean. How could he even start to put them into words and actually tell someone about them?

No. It was best to focus on the concrete and ignore the rest for now. Otherwise he'd just end up curled up in a ball somewhere.

Samurai saluted Naruto as he passed through the halls, greeting him as if he were some kind of war hero. It made Naruto curl his lips in a wordless sneer. Maybe he'd ended the war when he killed Killer B and forced Kumo and Iwa to the negotiation table, but that didn't make him a hero. It just made him someone willing to kill people he called his comrades.

"Put a smile on your ugly face, or people will assume you don't want to be here." Sasuke advised, slipping out of the dim shadows that lurked behind the huge pillars holding up the roof. Unlike Naruto the Uchiha didn't seem overly bothered by their sudden summons to a summit in the Land of Iron.

Funny, Naruto would have thought that the bad memories of tearing through the building after Danzo like a psychopath would bother Sasuke a bit more. It certainly made _his_ spine itch, but maybe that had less to do with memories and more to do with their present circumstances.

"Better here than marching around out there, I suppose." Naruto admitted, forcing his face into a grimace that sort of looked like a smile. Normally he had a bit more skill at playing nice with assholes, but he was just too damned tired to pretend. And besides, they were all expecting Uzumaki Naruto anyway. Naruto Gremory's noble polish wasn't relevant. "Are they in there?"

A mocking lilt coloured Sasuke's voice. "Shockingly, you're the first to arrive. But then there's a first time for everything, isn't there?"

The familiar banter with the only man Naruto would call his brother was enough to soften the sharp edges of his mouth into a more natural smile, and after cursing Sasuke out below his breath, Naruto threw back his shoulders and entered the meeting room.

It looked almost identical to the day that Sasuke had assaulted the five Kage, with banners proclaiming the five so-called Great Shinobi countries hanging over a semi-circle table. The only real difference was that the MIzukage's seat was moved to the middle as the most supposedly neutral village, even though in the closing days before the armistice Kiri had launched an all-out attack on a crippled Kumo.

Opportunistic bastards.

There was no place for Naruto to sit, and he wondered if he was expected to stand around like a gormless asshole while the Kage argued over stupid bullshit. If they didn't want him to sit with them, why was he even here in the first place?

Eventually Naruto just gave a huff, deciding to lean against the wall beneath the Konoha banner with folded arms and a scowl. Whatever. Let them come. He could deal with a little bit of lurking in the background if it meant that everything would get sorted out.

* * *

Tension hung so tightly in the air that Sasuke wondered why it hadn't snapped yet. Everyone in the room was pretending at being casual, but they were doing it so poorly that Sasuke could tell with a lazy glance every single one of them was ready to draw blades and shed blood.

It made him nostalgic for his years in Otogakure. Death had never been very far, and no one was to be trusted.

"I would think it's not a surprise to any of us that at _minimum_ you're be expected to completely vacate the lands surrounding Konoha." Sakura pointed out mildly, her emerald eyes glittering coldly like shards of ice. "We don't care what ridiculous new name you've tried to give it. It belongs to us and every single one of your colonists will go back where they've come from."

The white-blond hairs of Darui's mustache twitched as the new Raikage sighed, settling his elbows on the table and pinning Sakura with a frank look. "It's not as simple as ordering them to stop patrolling. We're talking about dozens if not hundreds of families. They're not occupiers. Konoha is their home. Many of them were even born there. They don't know anything else."

Unlike A, Darui had the level head needed for rubbing elbows and playing politics. In purely pragmatic terms, Sasuke supposed it was actually a good thing he'd killed A, since while the old Raikage had been respected he'd been too much of a hothead to surrender with any kind of grace.

Gaara considered Naruto with an unfathomable gaze before turning to his fellow Kage and frowning. "That's an excuse, not a justification for the continued occupation. The shinobi of the Leaf have their own traditions and their own culture. Just because a handful of your warriors were born in the ruin of their homeland doesn't mean Konoha belongs to them. Konoha belongs to _Konoha_ , and no one else."

"Precisely." Chojuro agreed, propping himself up on one elbow as he stared at Darui and Kurotsuchi with a lidded gaze. The Rokudaime Mizukage wasn't a staunch Konoha ally by any means, but he no doubt understood the value of a strong and independent Leaf to the balance of power.

Not to mention that no one sensible wanted to make an enemy out of a village with walking superweapons.

Scarlet tipped nails rasped against the tabletop as Kurotsuchi leaned back, the corner of her mouth quirking up mockingly. "Just because the government changes doesn't mean the people have to. Just give everyone a choice about if they want to stay in Konoha or be expelled. It would be a lot more ethical than throwing them out of their homes just because of what their grandfathers did."

"And have a fifth column inside the gates for the next fifty years? Do you take us for idiots?" Sakura pursed her lips. "They will _all_ go, and that's our final word on the matter. Unless you want to settle this on the battlefield."

Very deliberately, Gaara shifted his stare towards Naruto, holding his mismatched eyes on the aged blond for a few seconds before looking back at Darui.

The naked threat visibly irritated the other Kage, but there was little they could do but concede with a grumble. In the end all the power in the negotiations was held by the southerners, since no one could beat Naruto or Sasuke in the field.

In the end, the entire discussion seemed to play out that way. Gaara or Sakura would suggest something in a very mild and reasonable tone of voice. Then Kurotsuchi or Darui would disagree, and then Gaara or Sakura would make some veiled reference to Naruto or Sasuke. After that Kurotsuchi would huff and puff while Darui sighed, and they'd concede.

It was vaguely amusing to Sasuke in a schadenfreude sort of way, but Naruto seemed to just get more irritated as time went on.

Sasuke watched Naruto move from careful neutrality to disbelief to a burning rage. Bright blue eyes darkened to indigo with a hateful flame, and the faint white scars along Naruto's jawline rippled as the blond clenched his teeth. Naruto had never been all that great at keeping quiet when he was irritated, and Sasuke knew that sooner or later something was going to give.

"No." Sakura bit out sharply, all shards of gravel in her throat as she slapped a palm down and glared heatedly as Kurotsuchi. "Kusa might have been a buffer state but it was _our_ buffer state. You won't be getting a single fucking ryo out of them, much less have any influence on selecting their Head Jounin."

The building tension had slowly stripped away the Raikage's veneer of civility, and he seemed to give up being polite as a lost cause. Instead of polite smile a venomous sneer twisted Darui's mouth, and he held his hands out in sarcastic supplication. "Well what do you expect us to do? We can't just give you the pre-war order. It was a very different world back then. You barely have the numbers to occupy Konoha. Trying to control all the minor countries is just going to create rebellion and lead to the next world war. Try thinking with your head rather than your guts."

"We are not thinking with our _guts_ , so to speak." Garra murmured, Kazekage robes swishing as he leaned forward and pinned Darui with the lavender eye he'd taken from Sasuke's true body. "It's only in the long term that we would even need to consider compromising. In the short term we certainly have the power to control the smaller villages."

The naked implication that was they expected to turn Naruto into a guard dog, moving from village to village and striking terror in the peoples' hearts to uphold their hegemony. And that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The boiling heat in Naruto's eyes froze over, and the blond strode forward with liquid lethal grace. "That is _enough_." He declared, his voice deceptively mild in comparison to the frigid pressure of his killing intent bearing down on everyone in the room.

Kurotsuchi jerked back in her seat, lips bloodless while Sakura's eyebrows climbed to her hairline.

Over the years Sasuke had become intimately familiar with all the shades of Naruto's anger. In general, Naruto's rage was like a firecracker; all flash and light and gone in an instant. Naruto was quick to burn but quick to forgive. But at a certain point the fire went cold, and all that was left was ice and poison.

"I didn't come here to be your trump card, Sakura." Out of everyone in the room it was Sakura that Naruto would have expected to keep the faith, and the string of that betrayal had cut him deeply. "I certainly didn't come here to stand around twiddling my thumbs while you morons recreated the Treaty of Versailles."

That reference visibly confused most of the people in the room, but Sasuke knew all about the other world, so he knew exactly what Naruto was worried about.

After all, what was the point of a peace treaty so lopsided it forced another war?

* * *

Naruto's missing right arm throbbed with a sharp ache, the phantom pain throbbing in time with his heartbeat. It reminds him of his own life, half torn to shit and _gone_ , but he could still feel the loss like it was freshly bleeding.

There was a twisted metaphor in that line of thought, somewhere, but Naruto didn't care to pursue it. He'd bowed and scraped and struggled and wept and raged against the world, and he'd gotten nothing to show for it. As far as he was concerned he was fucking done with keeping his tongue behind his teeth and placing faith in other people.

If there was anyone in the world that Naruto would have expected to never turn their backs on him, it was Sakura and Gaara. Sakura had been by his side on Team Seven for years, preserving loyally through fire and blood until they finally birthed peace and brought Sasuke home. Gaara had been his dark mirror, sinking down in hatred until they'd fought and Naruto brought the redhead back to the light like a diver pulled up pearls from the seabed.

Both of them had experienced more than their share of misfortune and bitterness, but he'd had faith in them and they'd had faith in him. Sure, Naruto had expected some haggling and anger, because they were all only human, but he'd believed in their fundamental goodness. In their understanding and in their loyalty.

Instead they'd tried to treat Naruto like their personal attack dog, showing him off and making threats because they just wanted to take and take and _take_ without any regard for how it would hurt other people.

Fine. If they wanted to turn their backs on him then Naruto would turn his back on them. Fuck the lot of them.

"So this is what's going to happen." Naruto stated serenely, stepping into the middle of the half-circle formed by the table so he could meet their eyes one by one with a slit purple gaze. He never once let up on his raging killing intent, because it was the only way he could release the tangled mess of ice and venom mingling in his chest. "Since you incompetent baboons are incapable of making sensible decisions on your own, I'll make them for you."

Naruto drew nobility around him like a cloak, calling on every lesson Sirzechs and Grayfia had given him. He'd tried to rediscover the boy that had been Uzumaki Naruto, hoping that self-sacrifice and good nature would be enough to heal the world of shinobi. But it hadn't been, and he was starting to think it never could have been.

In the corner of his vision Naruto saw Sasuke's hand drop to rest over the hilt of his chokuto, and he knew that the Uchiha had his back.

"Naruto." Gaara began, perhaps hoping that the right word would be enough to calm the frozen fury flowing in the blond's veins. Or maybe the redhead had started to realize his mistakes. No one would ever know, because Naruto pinned him with blazing malicious red eyes.

"I did not give you permission to speak. Interrupt me again and I'll cut out your tongue." The threat was given in such an airy reasonable tone that Naruto could have been commenting on the weather if not for the utterly violent spike in his killing intent.

"Now here's what I'll do. Since you idiots cannot have separate countries without marching to war and murdering each other for stupid reasons, you won't have them. From now on everyone living on this continent is going to answer to one government. All decisions will be made by the same governing authority, determined solely by majority vote."

Kurotsuchi's mouth dropped open, and Naruto sneered at the sight. "You might want to close your mouth in case something flies in." he suggested in a sarcastic sugary voice, giving the Kage time to absorb his declaration.

Sasuke just looked amused, the bastard.

"Secondly, since I obviously can't trust any of you to look after your own people without trying to kill everyone else's, you won't. Sakura will govern from Kiri. Gaara will govern from Iwa. Chojuro will govern from Kumo. Darui can govern Suna. Kurotsuchi will govern from Konoha. Hopefully the knowledge that if you govern someone else's people badly they might do the same to yours keeps you on the straight and narrow."

"Thirdly, since I know that I couldn't trust any of you to cook lunch on time if I asked much less work together in good faith, I'll have Sasuke bind you all together with blood seals. If one of you kicks the bucket you all will. So you had best learn to work together and do your damn jobs right, and you had best handpick successors that can work together to keep everything stable when you all die at the same time."

If the five Kage had looked baffled before, they were looking positively aghast now. The terms he'd put together were especially harsh considering he was forcing people that hated each other to literally live and die by their alliance, but he was so irritated he didn't give a damn. Naruto had half a mind to say fuck it all, hunt down Kaguya, and let her gobble up all their chakra.

"Fourth, Gaara here is going to hand that Rinnegan over. We'll find someone to bring Sasuke back with it, and then he'll use it to send the bijuu off to their own private dimension so you morons can't put them in cages anymore."

Maybe it was the possibility of having to contend with both a living Naruto and a living Sasuke that sparked green lightning in Sakura's eyes, or maybe she'd just reached then end of her tether with his biting insults. "You can't seriously think we're just going to agree to that, do you?"

Orange sparks began to flutter in the air as Naruto pulled up his chakra, lurking just a hair away from calling on all of Kurama's power. "Yes, you _will_. Or none of you will be leaving this room alive."


	11. Chapter 11

In the end, it was all very anti-climactic.

Naruto held the Kage down, brushing off the poisonous glares they gave him while Sasuke took their mingled blood and used it as ink to sear curse seals into the backs of their necks.

Queerly, Sakura kept giving Sasuke outraged looks the entire time. Like she thought that _he_ would be the one to step up and complain about people being made to stop killing each other. But Sasuke had never been in love with the Will of Fire in the first place, and once Naruto stopped defending it the only option left to her was to put up and shut up.

Part of Naruto was relieved, because while submission was a rational act considering he could destroy them all and just make the same offer to their successors, he'd been worried they'd fight anyway.

Naruto didn't want to actually kill them. Smack them around a bit for their stubborn blindness maybe, but not murder them. Since his rebirth he'd gotten more than enough blood on his hands.

The other part of him, the deeper and darker part; was disappointed. Naruto wanted to unleash the beast in his chest that was rattling in its cage. He wanted to break, he wanted to burn…

Inhaling the acrid scent of cooked meat and blood, Naruto jerked his chin towards the door in a silent command. It only took a moment for the bruised and aching Kage to file out of the room, their faces twisted into expressions of shared misery. None of them spared a word for him, which was probably for the best.

If one of them started complaining again Naruto was going to start breaking things.

"Well that went well."

"Oh fuck off." Naruto sighed, pressing his hand to his forehead before turning to face Sasuke. Without having to actually look at Sakura and Gaara he found his anger slowly draining away and a spring of regret bubbling up inside. "Do you think I went too far?"

Maybe it was a bit childish to want some kind of reassurance, but Naruto knew that Jiraiya would have been disappointed in him. It's wasn't that Jiraiya wasn't able to be pragmatic on the battlefield and understand that sometimes fighting was necessary, but proposing a bona-fide dictatorship stood against everything his mentor had believed in.

Then again, maybe it was time for Naruto to lay that ghost to rest. He'd loved Jiraiya and fought for his godfather's ideals, but that didn't mean that Jiraiya spoke some absolute truth. It didn't mean that Jiraiya couldn't have been wrong.

Sasuke was silent for a moment before shrugging one shoulder and clapping a hand to Naruto's back to push the blond from the meeting room. "No. And you do remember that _I_ was the one advocating peace through force in the first place? We gave your method a chance. It's only fair that we try it my way now."

A bitter laugh escaped Naruto's throat as the pair of resurrected shinobi moved back through the halls. "Well, it looks like you won in the end then." That wry concession made Naruto feel oddly light and unburdened for the first time in weeks. "Fucking bastard."

It also made Naruto feel unaccountably lost.

If hot tears trailed down Naruto's cheeks, Sasuke didn't mention them.

* * *

The Naruto that came back looked even more brittle than the one who left, and Valerie almost expected his next step to shatter him into a hundred shaking shards. It was disconcerting, because even after waking in the ruins of Konoha he'd still managed to hold himself together with sheer willpower.

"Welcome back." The dhampir greeted, wincing at the low wounded growl Naruto gave in reply.

Sasuke only stayed long enough to give Valerie a considering look, nodding once sharply before ushering Koneko out of the lounge. The quiet click of the door shutting behind him seemed to echo in the stillness, punctuated by the rattle of Naruto throwing himself into the nearest armchair.

Naruto cursed sharply, clenching his fist in red-faced frustration before going limp with a sigh. He didn't make any move to break the silence after that, seemingly content to muse over his rage and despair.

The sight tugged at Valerie's heartstrings, and before she could even properly think about it she'd already abandoned her knitting and curled up in the seat nearest to her King. "Are you okay?"

Obviously he wasn't, but Valerie didn't want to make him feel backed into a corner.

Naruto's fist clenched so tightly that tiny rivulets of blood began to seep up through the cracks between his fingers. But he didn't speak, instead just choosing to loosen his hand and watch with hazy eyes as the torn open flesh of his palm hissed and steamed with regeneration.

It was only when the last of the smoke curled away that he murmured, low and broken. "No."

Valerie's King sounded so bewildered and lost that her heart broke all over again for him, and she took his hand between hers without any squeamishness despite the sticky blood slicked between their palms. "Will you tell me about it?"

In the end Naruto's sorrow couldn't be contained, and words spilled from his lips, sharp-edged and coated with pain. "Everything is just twisted and _wrong_ here. It's all fucked up and I don't even know how to begin fixing it. It's like a puzzle with half the pieces missing, except it wasn't me that lost them – just some asshole came in one day and stole them when I wasn't looking."

Smiling faintly at the rough metaphor, Valerie ran a soothing thumb across the scarred back of Naruto's hand but stayed silent. Naruto didn't need someone to _speak_ to him, he needed someone to _listen_ to him, and she wondered if he'd ever really had that. She wondered if he'd ever been allowed to ramble his heart out without challenges and interruptions. The mutual silence Naruto and Sasuke had helped, but Valerie knew it wasn't the same as a captive audience.

"It's like, _fuck_ , everything used to be so bright and so clear and now it's just a complete shit-show. Sure it wasn't perfect and sometimes it hurt but we'd all decided to bury the hatchet and move forward. My friends believed in me, and I believed in them, and we believed in what we were doing. We believed in the future and in people's hearts and that we weren't trapped by the shadows of the past. But then I died and it apparently went to fucking shit without me."

The bags under Naruto's eyes seemed to hang heavier as he stared into the distance, thinning his lips until they turned pale and bloodless. "We wanted a world without violence, you know? It's like, we thought that if people just _understood_ each other we could come to love each other, and that way we could have peace. _Real_ peace, not just everyone being too afraid to fight. I knew that Sakura and Gaara were bitter, but I didn't know they'd given up on everything they believed in. I didn't know _I'd_ given up on everything I believed in."

Naruto huffed a vicious chuckle. "You see, it's kind of a fucking joke. There I was, roaming about and telling people that nothing is unforgiveable. That everything could be solved with words if you just were willing to _try_ hard enough. But then I got in that room and I told them that they could either put down their swords or I'd kill them all. I'm such a goddamn hypocrite. Jiraiya-sensei would be ashamed of me."

Valerie never felt the distance between them as keenly as she did now. Naruto was a man whose hands built and toppled kingdoms while she was just a girl that grew up in a cage. But maybe that gulf didn't have to define them. "I don't know much about him, but I can say this. Blind idealism is not a victory march."

Bleary blue eyes snapped to stare at her face, bloodshot and almost desperately focused, and it gave Valerie the strength to go on. "I don't know what your godfather would have thought, but there's a difference between a theory and the real world. The real world is messy, it demands compromises and sometimes a realization that the ends can justify the means."

Pausing to take a breath, Valerie faintly flushed when she realized that Naruto was staring at her with an utterly enthralled face. He watched her like she was in the process of hanging the moon, and it made the blonde realize this was a make or break moment for her King. "So yes, your godfather taught you that love is the key to real peace – but love can only be born with understanding and without conflict. Maybe that kind of peace can only grow under the peace of the sword, because people need to stop fighting long enough to let that love grow."

Blood and ashes, she was embarrassed and rambling, but even spouting half-baked philosophy seemed better than letting the queer charge in the air hang around unchallenged. "And even if your godfather disagreed with you, that doesn't mean he was ashamed of you. He _loved_ you. And we'd forgive the people we love pretty much anything."

Naruto quirked up the corner of his mouth, and then threw back his head and laughed. He laughed long and hard until his voice went hoarse and gleaming tears crowned his eyelashes. He laughed until Valerie flushed with shame. He laughed until his Bishop tried to pull her hands away.

Cutting off mid-chortle, Naruto let the hysteria slip away like early morning dew under the sun, leaving only his unsettling focus on the dhampir.

A pair of azure eyes burned like the hottest part of a flame, pale and bright and imbued with some kind of fey glitter. It consumed her to the point Valerie barely noticed when her King gently took her by the chin, prodding at her bottom lip with a calloused thumb.

"The sun rises in your eyes." Naruto whispered, the words falling like a last judgement from his mouth.

Then he kissed her.

* * *

"Are we going anywhere in particular or are you just wandering aimlessly?"

Sasuke snorted at the sarcastic barb, throwing a vile glare over his shoulder at Koneko. "I had the thought that maybe we could get some milk and tuna for you."

The cool expression on Koneko's face didn't waver a hair. Instead she just very deliberately shifted her gimlet gaze towards the tapestries that lined the corridor. The silent insult would have infuriated someone else, but it just made Sasuke smirk with amusement.

Cheeky brat.

A quiet minute passed as Sasuke waited for the nekomata to try and dig more information out of him, but eventually he caved with a shrug. "I just need to speak to Sakura for a couple of minutes."

Koneko's mouth pursed at that, but she didn't vocalize any disagreement. Which was ideal because even if Sasuke himself didn't particularly want to speak to his former teammate, he _had_ to. Naruto might forget about the minutiae because at heart Naruto was a dreamer. He was a visionary that dealt almost solely with larger concepts.

Sasuke was the one that had to handle the nitty gritty details. Sasuke was the one that had to take Naruto's off the cuff expectations and refine them into an actual workable system before the Kages decided to try and pull a fast one on them.

Turning the corner, Sasuke settled his Sharingan stare on the pair of jounin guarding Sakura's room. The malice in his crimson eyes was so potent that both men went pale and stepped out of his way with a stammer.

For a moment Sasuke considered warning Koneko to stay quiet and let him deal with his former comrades, but then thought better of it. She was a clever enough woman to not need that kind of direction. So instead he just squared his shoulders and slammed open the doors with an echoing bang. "Evening Sakura."

Dark shadows circled under her venomous verdant gaze, and the pale pallor of the Hokage's skin only made the color even bolder. "Sasuke." She allowed, her voice quiet and stately despite the her ill appearance. "Is there some kind of emergency? Or is it just that you couldn't contain yourself until my husband got back?"

The perverse implication could have started a scandal if they were anyone else. But no one would believe that a dead man could be controlled by such bizarre lust, and as a leader Sakura's reputation was spotless. So Sasuke just brushed it off with nary a blink before stepping fully into the room and standing with tireless stiffness. "I think we should clarify a few things about Naruto's… treaty."

Sakura's lip curled with disgust that bordered on hatred, but she didn't look surprised. "Well go on then." She prodded, voice thick with rage and a touch of desolated betrayal. " _Wow_ me with the mastery of statescraft you attained during those years of being an insane traitor and dead. I'm just on the edge of my seat here."

Then, despite the still aching branded seal on her back, the Hokage lounged indolently in her armchair.

If Sasuke was still alive he imagined that his heart would have lurched at that insult. After decades apart and new bonds in an entirely different world, he hadn't thought that Sakura would have had the capacity to hurt him. But having such a blatant reminder of the failure and ruin that was his first life thrown in his face so suddenly made him rock back on his heels.

"You shut your _fucking_ mouth." Koneko shot back, her tone level and chilled with the fury of an arctic thunderstorm. It wasn't a loud declaration by any means, but it was sharp and biting enough to make Sasuke's eyebrows twitch.

" _Koneko_." He warned softly, surprised but warmed by her sudden move to profane poison on his behalf.

Even if Sasuke didn't enjoy it, Sakura had a right to her anger, and Koneko was a stranger in this world. She wasn't aware of the exact circumstance that led them to such a contentious conversation in the first place. Her cursing out Sakura wasn't strictly fair.

With a small grumble of protest Koneko subsided, Sakura watching the short exchange with hawk-like focus. "I didn't know you'd made a new friend, Sasuke." She prodded, cracking an idle knuckle as she tried to peer around the Uchiha's bulk and fully take in the white-haired nekomata.

Any traces of regret and geniality vanished from Sasuke's countenance, the Rinnegan swirling to life in his left eye as he bore down on the Hokage with the promise of blood and steel on his tongue. "And you're going to _continue_ to live in ignorance." He declared darkly, the 'or else' passing through the air unspoken.

Sakura drew back with a huff, lifting her open palms in a surrender gesture. "Fine, fine. Whatever. But what are you _here_ for, Sasuke?" The shift from bitter teasing to a brisk businesslike candor was swift enough to give whiplash as Sakura realized the Uchiha's store of patience had run out.

Gravedirt and porcelain crinkled faintly as Sasuke sighed, the frustrated exhale reminiscent of when he'd actually been alive. "Like I said, Naruto's proposal needs a little more detail. We already made sure you and the other Kage couldn't kill each other. But you need to select your successors now, and even a few _spares_ so we can bind them together too. That way there will be peace for at least a couple of generations."

The five Kage had no idea that Sasuke and Naruto intended to suicide and exit the shinobi world as soon as they got a functioning system in place, but sooner or later they would realize their overseers were gone. Simply binding their lives together wasn't enough when they could just abdicate to their successors and head to the battlefield for suicide missions. All potential leaders needed to be controlled, and since there were only ever a handful of potential Kage in a village at any time, binding all potential successors would actually _work_.

Every village would have to hold back their strongest soldiers out of the knowledge that the death of their enemies would trigger the death of their comrades and the destruction of their military potential. The Kage were war-hardened, but not suicidal enough to weaken their villages to the point that they could be overthrown by the minor countries.

For a few heartbeats Sakura seemed fit to explode, a pink flush staining her cheekbones as she took in Sasuke's new ultimatum. Then her shoulders slumped, and she gave a rueful chuckle that was surprisingly good-natured. "Well I guess between the two of you that all angles will get covered, hmm? Alright, what else?"

Backed into a corner and stripped of all her options as she was, Sasuke expected Sakura to become even more spiteful and twisted. Instead it seemed like the premise of peace by all means had engendered a personal surrender, and for the first time since he'd been resurrected Sasuke saw hints of the girl he'd once known.

"To clarify, when Naruto said he expected one government for the continent he wasn't just talking about shinobi. It extends to the civilian level as well, so you can consider the feudal lords abolished and their countries annexed. It'll be one nation for everyone, shinobi and samurai and civilian alike."

"I'd thought that was a given, but go on…"

"Also, about the bijuu. Yes, we're going to put them in a new dimension but we don't expect you to just kill off all the new jinchuuriki. We'll use Edo Tensei on Killer B and that crazy Nibi one before extracting the bijuu from everyone, including Naruto. They'll all be dead at that point, but I'll still be walking around to make sure that they all get brought back properly with Rinne Tensei. So don't think you can trick us there."

"I suppose I can admit that I _thought_ about doing that, but you win."

The conversation ran long into the night, with the two former comrades eventually joined by Gaara.

Over it all presided Koneko, her vigilant amber stare unyielding despite the apparent reduction in tension and Sakura's resignation to the new order. The nekomata hoped that everything would work out neatly, but if it didn't, she was _ready_.

Koneko had already grown to hate the world of shinobi and its insistence on bleeding Naruto and Sasuke dry. Murdering a few uppity humans for their sake wouldn't even make her cold heart skip a beat.


	12. Chapter 12

"Please stop!"

Koneko watched Sasuke as he snorted and cut through the neck of yet another squealing noble, blood squirting up in a crimson mist until the man's heart gave out. It was hardly the first death she'd seen an unfeeling Sasuke deal out, and she doubted it would be the last.

The air stank of blood and iron. Forcing back her disgust Koneko breathed in deeply. The sickly-sweet smell that made her want to gag, but the nekomata clenched her jaw and endured until her lungs were full of the stench.

So what if the constant stream of executions that night led to a floor coated with blood and her stomach clenching with the urge to vomit? She'd have to wade through much more during her life, so this was just getting an early start. It was better to get used to it _now_ rather than waiting until she had to hold the blade herself.

After all, it would embarrass the Gremory clan if she started puking everywhere the first time they sent her to eliminate a family of subversives. It was better to show her weakness in this utterly irrelevant world than it was to freeze up when Rias would be depending on her.

Very carefully, Koneko refused to draw any parallels between what she and Sasuke were doing and what Kuroka had done to her as a child. Both parties might have raged in massacre and murder, but there had been no underlying purpose in Kuroka's actions. Koneko only killed because it was necessary, where Kuroka had killed simply for the pleasure of it – because she was a crazed bitch. They were not the same.

They _weren't_.

Waiting until Sasuke cleaned the blood from his sword, Koneko jerked her head towards the open doors before leading the way out of the family suite. "Let's go."

"Fine."

Crimson soaked tapestries garbed the walls, and every step Koneko took made a quiet squelch from all the gore sticking to the floorboards. "I hope Snow Country is less troublesome." Everything would have been so much _simpler_ if the Lord of Lightning Country had just swallowed his pride and sworn loyalty to the regime Naruto was creating.

Sasuke shrugged his shoulder, unbothered by the heavy scent of the dead and dying that littered the Lightning Country Lord's palace.

Koneko briefly envied him. It might not be fun and games to only be able to perceive the world through sight and sound, but at least her friend never had to worry about being able to _taste_ the choking cloud of blood and shit in the air.

"Naruto and I put Koyuki on the throne in the first place. Assuming she's still alive, getting her to kneel shouldn't be a problem."

Sensing a story that Sasuke hadn't bothered to share with Rias or her peerage, Koneko filed that comment away in the back of her mind. She'd bring it up once they were in Gehenna again so that everyone in their little makeshift family could hear about it. Until then they had some dirty work to do to make sure Naruto's new peace proposal got off the ground.

"And after that it's Stone Country?" She prodded, trying to remember the bland names the humans of this world had called their homelands. Their lack of originality had been funny at first, but when they needed to actually _visit_ all the idiots and lay down the law Koneko was finding it much less amusing. Couldn't they at least be creative enough to come up with unique names rather than just describing the natural world?

"Earth Country."

Koneko gave a hum of acknowledgement, stepping out into the moonlit courtyard.

Silver light dappled the evergreen trees, painting green needles a pale white. The trees themselves stood out against the darkness like white-washed ghosts, silver columns against the black shadows cloaking the walls of the compound. If she squinted Koneko could probably peer through the haze and count brick by brick, but she didn't care to look that closely.

The nekomata couldn't claim to be enthusiastic about having to wander the continent in the first place. Sasuke was running around demanding the unconditional surrender of the various daimyo while she just stood around like stupid muscle.

At least it was probably more interesting than whatever Valerie was doing.

While Sasuke had decided to deliver Naruto's terms in person to every daimyo in the shinobi world for the intimidation factor, Naruto had gone south into the Land of Fire, towing all the Kage behind him. They were a greedy bunch, always squabbling like children, and Valerie had gotten the short end of the stick having to look after them.

So while Koneko felt like drowning herself in the nearest bottle of sake just to get away from the boredom, she imagined Valerie was fantasizing about the escape found in the noose of a rope.

The world of shinobi had no place for them, and every single second they spend breathing its air drove that fact in relentlessly. Koneko might have the power to throw herself into the battles of this world, but she didn't have the _right_. She was only a stranger, waiting at the door until she was called on to bring Sasuke home.

That said, even if Koneko wasn't allowed to fight at Sasuke's side, she could still watch him throw down the barred gates like a vengeful god of war. She could still watch the purple flame of his chakra surround and crown him like a midnight nebula, wishing the entire time that he could so easily summon identical splendor back in Gehenna. Their life of bowing their heads to social expectation would have been _very_ different. They wouldn't have to _hide_ all the time.

There was in inviolable majesty in her friend in those conquering moments, and Koneko wondered if he'd claw his way back up to similar heights back home. She wondered if he'd steal away her breath again and again like a relentless thief, leaving her to marvel at the sheer brilliance of a titan turned into a weapon.

"Are you ready?" Sasuke asked before stepping close and wrapping an arm around Koneko's waist without waiting for her answer.

The porcelain weight felt like a crushing steel band resting against her stomach, but Koneko didn't have a chance to protest before the world was abruptly filled with sheets of lavender and ghostly sparks, and at that point it would be senseless to pitch a fit anyway.

Sasuke's Susanoo made the world tremble with every movement, the chakra construct's weight shattering the earth as it kneeled down and then launched into the sky to take flight. Every flap of its wings was a thunderclap, splitting the air so loudly that conversation was impossible as it crossed the distance between nations.

Maybe it was because she wouldn't be heard over the sound of the Susanoo's wings cruising through the skies, or maybe it was because she didn't care to speak up. But Koneko rode the hours out until they reached Snow Country with her nose pressed into an unyielding chest that smelled of gravedirt and ancient bone.

* * *

Ink stained Naruto's fingernails, and his hand was stiff from all the writing he'd done in the last few hours. "Someone help me. _Please_?" he moaned, slamming his face into the pile of paper covering his makeshift desk.

"I see _that_ hasn't changed."

Rubbing at the stump of his right arm, Naruto pulled back to quirk an eyebrow up at Shikamaru. "You're one to talk." Despite vague memories of promises to quit in their youth, the grizzled man had still decided to practically hotbox the tent with second-hand smoke. If Naruto had long term plans to stick around in this body, he'd probably be pretty pissed off.

Shikamaru just scoffed, snatching a handful of papers off the cheap little slap of pine that was Naruto's so-called desk. "You're making marks on your forehead with you do that, by the way."

"Shut the hell up."

Dark eyes scanned through each memo, growing tighter with concentration as Shikamaru powered through the legwork that came with setting up Naruto's one world government.

Honestly, Naruto was kind of surprised at how easily Shikamaru took to what was essentially creating a global junta. He'd been suspicious every time Shikamaru _breathed_ wrong when his old friend had first show up, especially since he'd been sent up by _Sakura_ to help Naruto out, but as far as he could see Shikamaru's work was perfect.

"You know, you don't have to try and kill me with lasers from your eyes." Shikamaru mumbled around his cigarette, coils of smoke escaping his nostrils as he squinted down at a slightly yellowed page. "I'm not going to just snap and turn into a murdering rage monster at the drop of a hat. I'll give you fair warning first."

Naruto huffed a laugh, turning his eyes done to the stark black kanji but keeping an ear on Shikamaru's movements. The only reason he'd agreed in the first place to having his old comrade help was because Sasuke was gone and Naruto knew that bureaucracy wasn't exactly in his skillset. He needed the help, and out of all the people in the shinobi world that he knew Naruto expected Shikamaru to be the most rational to deal with.

Someone like Kiba would curse out buzzwords at him for turning his back on Konoha's victory. At least Shikamaru would give a sincere effort to building a new government, even if he disagreed on a personal level with the ideology underlying the revolution. The Nara was pragmatic enough to work with the world as it was rather than crying when it wasn't how he thought it should be.

Cracking open a new scroll, Naruto scanned it with hard blue eyes before looking back up at Shikamaru with a half-lidded gaze. "Sasuke sent a letter to let me know Yuki no Kuni surrendered without conditions. You figure that we should fold them into the central government directly or put it on a timeline?"

The thin white scars across Shikamaru's forehead rippled as the man sucked deeply on his cigarette, weighing the alternatives with a mind as quick as lighting. "Even if they're a minor country, I'd suggest making a protectorate out of them rather than annexing them outright. They're not right next door like Kusa no Kuni. We don't want to overextend the central government."

Naruto shrugged a shoulder, accepting the suggestion wordlessly. He wasn't dumb enough to think he could control a continent of unruly shinobi with a single word. No, it was better to consolidate the smaller countries into the larger ones, and then let those larger nations come together over the space of a few decades.

Five or six curse seal bound generations of back-up Kage would make sure that the leaders of those super-countries would be stable and invested long enough to make it happen. And even if they didn't, at least Naruto could say he'd given them more than a fair shake at it. If they wanted to keep breaking the world despite his best efforts to fix it, it was time to wash his hands of the matter and let them.

It wasn't his responsibility anymore to perpetually save the shinobi from themselves. Naruto didn't mind fighting when he had to, but he didn't want to go to war forever in a foreign land. His family was back in Gehenna, not in Konoha.

He had no ties to these people anymore. It was time to admit that and take off the rose-tinted glasses he'd been looking backwards with.

The sensation of freedom that washed over Naruto's mind was like the first shaft of sunlight peeking over the dark horizon, burning away the midnight haze that had clouded his heart for so long that he'd gotten used to the shadows.

For the first time since his rebirth as a devil, Naruto felt unburdened by the past and ready to walk forward into the future.

He'd never forget Uzumaki Naruto, but he wasn't that person anymore. He couldn't be. It wasn't fair to the people who loved him in his new homeland, and it wasn't fair to himself to keep obsessing over a time long gone.

Rising to his feet with a spine-popping crack, Naruto scanned dismissively over the mess covering his workbench. "I'd guess by now that Kurotsuchi has a firm handle on the capital and gave the old daimyo the boot. You should find someone to pack this shit up. I don't know about you but I'm totally done with working in musty old tents."

"Here I was thinking you'd want to rough it out in the mud like a real man."

"Fuck off."

* * *

The days wheeled on after Naruto arrived at Hi no Kuni's capital to fanfare and pomp with Valerie carefully tucked away in the entourage of Konoha shinobi that Sakura had insisted he take with him. The attempt to stake a claim over him irritated the blond, but he didn't care enough to refuse, and before he knew it a week of whirlwind meetings had gone by.

"I thought I'd find you out here."

Naruto smirked faintly, turning about so he could lounge against the wooden balcony railing to stare at his Bishop head on. "What can I say? I'm a creature of habit." At the end of every negotiation-filled day Naruto dragged himself out onto one of the balconies so he could stare out over the palace gardens and try to sift through the bureaucratic babble boiling in his brain. And every night, once he'd settled a bit, Valerie would hunt him down and join him.

Pouting at the sarcasm, Valerie stepped up beside her King to peer cautiously at the flowers and shrubbery. The pale moonlight lit her in ghostly colors, dappling her hair silver and brightening her eyes to a glittering fire-ruby.

It wasn't the first time Naruto had seen her under the night sky with her hair floating faintly in the breeze, and he doubted it would be the last, but it still made his blood burn and his pants grow tight.

"Everything alright?" Naruto prodded, trying and failing to take his mind off the dhampir. If Naruto didn't know exactly who Valerie's parents were he'd think she was the daughter of a succubus. Ever since he'd kissed her he couldn't even stand next to her without wondering what it would be like to do it again.

Especially since if he _wanted_ to, Naruto knew she'd let him – as many times as he wanted. Naruto was coming to understand that was just how Valerie was. It simmered in his veins, that dizzying, intoxicating knowledge that he could demand anything from her and have her give it up willingly like a priestess offering up devotions to her god.

It was unhealthy to the point that Naruto knew they both should really get psychological help. It wasn't right that Valerie thought herself as only existing to for his sake. It was even worse that rather than being repulsed by that level of obsessive dependency, the beast of instinct inside him welcomed it.

When Naruto had been dragged back across the void and resurrected in his old homeland, he hadn't expected to be broken. But he had been, with every step he'd taken from the sands of Suna to the snowy-tipped peaks of Tetsu no Kuni; shattering into sharp edged pieces that didn't remember how to fit together anymore.

It was Valerie that had taken Naruto's hand and told him, knowing those ragged shards might leave her bleeding, that he didn't have to be the same person he'd been. Even if he forgot how to fit put the fragments of himself back together to form the picture that was Uzumaki Naruto, he could still make a new mural out of them. He could be remade.

She'd save him in that moment. Was it any wonder that Naruto wanted to cling to her like a man lost at sea clutching his life raft?

Valerie's mouth curved into a small smile, her lips glistening dark and wet. "It's fine. I was a little _thirsty_ , but I took care of it." It took a moment for that underlying implication to work its way into Naruto's brain, but once it did he realized that his Bishop wasn't wearing lip gloss. No, her mouth was damp with some of the blood that Rias had bottled up for her.

He wondered if it tasted sweet or if it tasted like bitter metal.

Oddly, questioning that didn't disturb Naruto like he thought it probably should. His heart was still ardent. Still yearning. If he hadn't made a silent promise not to take things any further until they were back in Gehenna, with him back in the body that felt more and more like his true one as the days passed, he'd probably press Valerie into the railing and kiss her mouth swollen.

Naruto dragged a shaky hand through his blond and grey mane, stepping towards the doors that led back inside. "We should probably head in for the night. It'll be a busy day again tomorrow and all that." He could admit that he was beating a hasty retreat before he lost control of himself and did something he regretted.

With Ravel he'd never been so vulnerable. He'd had moments of emotional weakness with his fiancé and known that eventually that relationship would get consummated, but he'd always been able to push it off by focusing on his morals. Ravel and Valerie were both decades younger than Naruto, at least by experience, and it wouldn't have felt right to do anything with them. Sometimes he'd even thought that he'd hold off until the girls were well into their twenties or thirties.

Valerie was either eighteen or nineteen, while Naruto was almost forty. That age gap would have made any decent human being balk at the difference. And maybe that was the problem. His humanity was slipping through his fingers bit by bit, like grains of sand. He'd already decided that it was time to lay Uzumaki Naruto to rest, but what did that leave behind?

Just Naruto Gremory, the son of the devil.


	13. Chapter 13

Sweat slicked her palms and every cell in her body screamed at her to run away, but Suzuno throttled back that urge and stood her ground. She was a proud kunoichi of Kirigakure, and she'd known since she was a little tyke that at some point she might have to die for her village.

Waiting around until it was time for her bijuu to be extracted wasn't exactly what she'd thought her death would be like, but at least they'd promised to resurrect her afterwards. A second chance at life was more than most people ever got.

She just had to push through the pain and do her duty.

"That's one down." Uzumaki Naruto muttered, his neck craned back as he watched the last flickers of red chakra flee from Killer B's undead body to form the solid body of the Hachibi.

Suzuno hoped she didn't faint. "I _totally_ didn't sign up for this." One of her fellow jinchuuriki growled an agreement, but the blonde young woman was so dazed it went in one ear and out the other. In two months Konoha had changed the world again, and she was still trying to catch up.

" **See you on the other side."** Gyuki boomed, a hurricane gale escaping his mouth at the bijuu squinted down at the assembled jinchuuriki, looking _through_ them to his kindred within before gracefully letting Uchiha Sasuke whisk him off to another dimension with the Rinnegan.

Easy peasy.

It was _maddening_.

Three days ago she'd been trying to decide if she wanted pork or fish for lunch, and now she was standing next to the greatest concentration of power in recent history. The five Kage lurked off to the side of the beach with their lips pursed. All the jinchuriki were gathered in one place waiting to go through extraction. Then there was fucking _Uzumaki Naruto_ and _Uchiha Sasuke_ walking around and giving everyone orders. Suzuno was breathing the same air as legends.

She was living a fangirl's wet dream; if she could stop wanting to piss herself long enough to enjoy it.

"Alright, next."

Nobody moved for a few thundering heartbeats, frozen under the mismatched red and violet glare of the last of the Uchiha. No one wanted to be the one that stepped forward to take the full brunt of that cold malevolence.

Then finally Killer B turned to give a particularly petulant looking teenaged boy with a blazing orange buzzcut a significant look.

Green D folded his arms across his chest with a sneer, a rippled of barely restrained violence concentrated on his gravedirt and porcelain cheekbones. The Nibi's jinchuuriki had been cursing up a quiet storm and trying to melt Naruto with his eyes since the moment he'd been resurrected, but a quiet word from Killer B had been enough to make him grudgingly cooperate.

"Fine." Green D spat when Naruto only watched him with an expression of supreme patience. " _Fine_." Then he stomped past Suzuno, leaving deep prints in the famously white sand of Nami no Kuni. "Let's get this over with then."

A bitterly amused smirk twisted Naruto's mouth, but then vanished so quickly Suzuno was left wondering if she'd just been imagining it. To be fair she'd expected more than a bit of hostility from both of them after remembering the battle of Konoha, but rather than anger the Kyuubi's jinchuuriki seemed like he just couldn't give a damn about any of it.

There was a darkness hanging around Uzumaki Naruto, a darkness that was directly in conflict with the unbending optimism all the stories said he had. Suzuno had once thought of the legendary blond as a goal to live up to, but looking at him now all she could do was shiver and turn away.

It was best not to get too comfortable. She could be the next one called on by the two titans.

* * *

"That's the last one."

Sasuke hummed an agreement, letting his hands fall away from their mirrored ram seal with a faint crackle of grinding bone. "The last except you." He pointed out to Naruto, glad for the first time that he was an undead creation rather than a living being. If he'd been brought all the way back he'd probably have passed out from chakra exhaustion after tearing through the dimensions eight times with his Rinnegan.

The Edo Tensei definitely had its uses in creating unbeatable and tireless supersoldiers.

Bumping his armless shoulder against Sasuke, Naruto just rolled his eyes before throwing the white sheet he clenched in his hands over the vacant eyed corpse of the Ichibi's jinchuuriki. The blonde girl seemed to stare with up with accusation in her dead face and it gave him the willies. "So how do you want to play this now?"

Twin Sharingan whirled like venomous rubies as Sasuke cast a heavy look across the beach. Six white shrouded bodies lay in neat rows at their feet, while that Green D brat was off pouting by the water's edge. He'd personally released Killer B from his resurrection, which just left the five Kage fluttering about up on the grass. There was nothing _obviously_ wrong, but he hadn't survived life as a shinobi by being unnecessarily reckless. "We'll deal with Kurama some other time, away from the crowd."

Naruto sighed in exasperation but gave in with a short nod. Truthfully he was tired and just wanted to be completely fucking done with the entire charade, however he also knew Sasuke had a point. They couldn't really trust any of the Kage to not try to pull some funny business if he freed Kurama right now. After extraction Naruto would be vulnerable and Sasuke was still currently dead, which would be prime time for any attempts to overthrow their new order.

The most strategic thing to do would be to wait to release Kurama until the very end. Naruto wasn't arrogant enough to think he'd be just as strong without his friend, and he'd need that strength to browbeat the shinobi into working order. Not to mention there were benefits if they thought he intended to stay longer than he actually would. The people in general would see his new order as more stable. "Yeah alright, we'll deal with it later. Time to get this party started?"

"I suppose."

Winking at the taciturn Uchiha, Naruto cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed over the rush of the surf. "Time to get your asses in gear fuck nuggets! Lookin' at you Gaara!" So crassly addressing his subordinates – and wasn't _that_ a head turner? Having all the Kage waiting him hand and foot – would horrify his mother, but Naruto wasn't too concerned about it. It wasn't like anything he did in the shinobi world would follow him back to Gehenna.

Anything _material_ anyway.

Sasuke just scoffed, folding his arms and watching as the gaggle of Kage made their way across the sand in a line. They reminded him vaguely of little ducklings, and the imagery of tiny water fowl with the heads of Kage amused him enough that he found himself smirking at Gaara's black eyepatch. "It's time."

Time for them to call out whoever they'd chosen as their sacrifice, so that life could be breathed back into his bones and into the bones of the jinchuuriki. Time for them to give him back his eyes, so that Sasuke could finally touch his true power rather than the copy the Edo Tensei jutsu gave him. Time for them to remember how it felt to live in true fear of his name.

"No funny business." Naruto warned, rubbing at the joint of his crippled shoulder with his hand as he pinned Chojuro with a suspicious glance. "I'll be watching."

Gaara's mouth twitched, but the blond couldn't tell if the man meant to frown or smile, since it smoothed back away in a split second. "Of course. We might have had our differences, but we never dealt with you in bad faith."

There was a rebuke in those words that actually aroused a flicker of sympathy in Naruto before he ruthlessly squashed it. "Yeah, sure." It might be technically correct that Gaara and Sakura had never outright told him that they'd turned their backs on his old ideals, but they'd never admitted they had different goals either. It had been a lie by omission as far as he was concerned.

Regardless, Naruto let the matter drop, instead choosing to focus on a wrinkled but still familiar face pushing its way through the crowd. "Okay, I'll admit that I'm a bit shocked that they picked _you_ of all people to throw to the wolves. Couldn't scrounge up some criminal and bribe him by paying his family or something?"

The cold glitter of Sasuke's real eyes deepened in Baki's sockets, but the aged jounin just smiled congenially. "Let me assure you, Naruto-san, that no one asked me to do anything. I volunteered myself for the task rather than leaving it for the next generation to handle."

Baki's outright willingness to die for the sake of others softened the prickling edges of Naruto's bitterness. His determination to follow his new path to the end didn't waver, but the blond found himself looking over the wrinkles of stress in the faces of the Kage with a little more forgiveness. "I suppose you were just doing the best you could, hm?" he muttered to himself.

The time for such conversations had long passed though, so shaking off the maudlin fugue Naruto briskly directed Baki to take his place before calling Green D over with a shout. "I figure you know already, but don't fuck this up." He warned blandly, calling on his Nine Tails Chakra Mode. "You'll only get one shot at this, so let me know if you're short on chakra and I'll give you a bit of a boost."

Rather than haggle over the exact arrangement that the constantly conflicting powers had agreed on, Baki just smiled enigmatically and gave himself over entirely to the Rinne Tensei. Thick streams of chakra in a dozen colours swirled through the air, finding their homes with a final sense of rightness.

Sasuke closed his eyes and for the first time in a month truly _breathed_. The flame of life passed into him, licking at his insides and chasing the chill of the grave out of him. Touch came back first, with the sand between his toes capturing him despite the sensation of his false eyes crumbling away. Then came taste, with the scent of the sea wind brushing over his tongue.

"Finally." Sasuke murmured, half a prayer; and then collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut.

"Fuck!" Naruto spat, diving to catch Sasuke before his unconscious friend landed face first in the sand. "I told you not to fuck it up!" His admonishment went unheeded as Baki breathed his last and died, while all around him Naruto's fellow jinchuuriki were waking back up with confused cries.

Lowering Sasuke to the ground, Naruto flipped the Uchiha over and pressed his fingers against the pulse at his friend's throat. Sasuke's heart thumped steadily, slow and strong, and he breathed in relief. At least they had that going for them.

A calloused hand settled on Naruto's shoulder, and the blond looked up in surprise only to catch sight of Sakura gingerly kneeling next to him with her hands wreathed in green chakra.

"It's just the shock of it." Sakura reassured her old squadmate, the pads of her fingers touching briefly at Sasuke's temples before continuing on to trace the rest of his skull. "Remember when Madara was first resurrected and went a little crazy over all the sensations? It's the same thing, but Sasuke went for a lot longer with most of his senses gone, so having them come back probably overwhelmed him. It's nothing permanent."

Sitting back on his haunches, Naruto rubbed at his forehead where he just _knew_ that a headache was going to build. "Yeah alright, that's fine I guess. No harm done or anything. We'll just pack him up and head on back then. Get Kurotsuchi to look after the kids or whatever."

"Not quite." Sakura grinned impishly before looking over her shoulder. "Gaara, be a dear and go grab my kit. There's no time like the present." The one-eyed redhead mumbled an agreement before striding off, but the Hokage had already turned her attention to pulling Baki's body up beside Sasuke's.

Naruto stared in confusion before it all clicked, and he spluttered "What, you're doing it _here_?"

"I don't know what you're so shocked about. I'm the best medic on the continent"

"That doesn't mean that you should be doing eye surgery _on a beach_!"

"Don't be such a big baby, Naruto. I brought all the tools I thought I'd need with me, and even if I didn't this is nothing compared to the way Obito and Madara ran around swapping eyes back in the day. They didn't even _sanitize_ , just bare hands with their balls to the walls."

"Those guys are _not_ the kind of people you should be taking your ideas from."

* * *

Red was her colour. It was the shade of her eyes. It was the tint of her mouth. It was the hue of the blood she drank. Love and hate, life and death, and above all things _passion_ were woven into red.

It also had the peculiar effect of seeming demonic and unnatural to humans, which was why Valerie chose to carefully observe Sakura with a clinical stare that shimmered like edged garnets. She wasn't trying to frighten the woman.

Not exactly.

Valerie just wanted Sakura to know that even though Naruto had basically forbidden any interaction between his Gehennan friends and the shinobi, she was _watching_.

"Look, I'm not saying you should coddle him, but keep in mind that by this point he's used to only having sight and sound. Throwing in three more senses on top of that can be psychologically overwhelming after a month of barely feeling anything. Give him a day or two to get used to all the new sensations."

Naruto huffed an explosive sigh, waving off the pink-haired woman with a scowl. "Fine, _fine_. I'll make sure that someone sticks around while Sasuke's out of it."

It had been hours since her King returned from sending off the bijuu, but Sasuke still slept like he'd been drugged. Valerie hoped that he would wake up soon, for Naruto's sake. The sight of him practically bouncing off the walls in agitation was making her anxious as well.

"Good. And remember to _keep me updated_. I don't think anything is wrong, but if something does go wrong I know you two numbskulls would be too proud to admit it."

"Oh bugger off, Sakura. I'm not a baby."

There was an ease between the old teammates that hadn't been there when Naruto had demanded their fealty in the Land of Iron. It was an ease that truly hadn't even been there that morning. Something had happened during their little trip out to the beach, and whatever it was had let to this new truce Valerie was seeing.

She wasn't sure that she liked it.

What if someone tried to move against her King while Sasuke wasn't able to help defend him? Valerie didn't trust any of these shinobi, and if something happened she alone wouldn't be much help. Sephiroth Graal was a powerful Sacred Gear, but it wasn't exactly combat oriented, and couldn't be used to heal chakra bearing beings anyway.

If something happened to Naruto, Valerie wouldn't be able to survive. Everything would be meaningless. She had no idea if Ophis could pluck up his soul so easily a second time, and Sasuke's technique required a DNA sample and a forbidden sacrifice. Immortality was not a sure thing for Naruto, which meant nothing else mattered except his protection.

Valerie waited as Sakura and her King exchanged a few last quiet words, tracking the Hokage as the woman left their apartments. Then she turned to Naruto. "Are you sure that you don't want to leave?" she asked for the third time since he'd come back. "That pineapple head already has the plans and you've bound up enough of the shinobi that they can't kill each other. We don't have to stay."

Massaging at his eyes with two fingers, Naruto seemed to age ten years in ten seconds. "No." he sighed softly, before his voice and face grew harder. The longing bled away, leaving only steel will behind. "No. We'll make it through another month, just to make sure that nothing unexpected pops up, and then we'll be gone. We can give them that much."

Inwardly Valerie was revolted by the idea. Naruto's kindness and generosity were part of why she loved him, but she wished he wouldn't let strangers take advantage of him. The blond was running himself into the ground for stupid short-sighted humans that didn't even deserve to breath the same air as him, much less demand his sweat and blood.

But this was what Naruto wanted, so she let the matter drop. At the very least her King deserved to get what he wanted _this_ time. The ancestors knew that he'd had precious little in the way of success since his resurrection.

"Hey, you okay? You look a bit pale."

Valerie smiled gently.

The abyss hungered, dark and empty and ravenously thirsty. It hungered for life and love and blood and power. Her supply of Rias' blood had run dry three days past, and the magic in Koneko's blood was only a shadow of that in Rias', whose blood was a pale imitation of the sweet majesty running through Naruto Gremory's veins. It was enough to survive, but not enough to thrive. Not enough to truly live.

She would just have to make it work, somehow.

The Grail whispered, ageless and eldritch with the ringing sound of the sun and the sweet taste of the grave. _'Take me up.'_

"I'm fine. You should worry more about yourself."


	14. Chapter 14

Sasuke woke to a pitch-black room with small fingers slowly combing through his hair, nails pleasantly dragging along his scalp. Physically it felt almost too good, warm tingles trailing after those nails and making his entire body buzz contently.

At least it was too dark for him to actually see anything without his Sharingan, otherwise he'd be forced to confront just how out and out awkward it was to be touched so intimately. His entire life since the Uchiha massacre had been an exercise in physical isolation and standoffishness. Breaking into the bubble was definitely something unusual that he would normally challenge.

But as long as he couldn't _see_ anything, Sasuke could pretend that everything was perfectly normal and continue to enjoy it. "How long has it been?"

The combing halted in surprise for a heartbeat, then resumed its steady rhythm. "A day and a half." Koneko responded neutrally, shifting on the bed to perch cross-legged. "Nothing significant happened." She continued to run her fingers through Sasuke's hair for another minute before silently withdrawing.

Sasuke ruthlessly repressed the pang of disappoint that rippled through his stomach. He was hardly a child who needed a woman petting him while he laid around trying to sleep. It was best just to focus on what actually mattered rather than a weak craving for comfort. "I assume Naruto is busy playing dictator while Valerie is off stalking him."

A low chuckle of confirmation escaped the Rook, and Sasuke found his lips curling up. Naruto might practically be his brother, but that man's insistence on always doing the moral thing was fondly exasperating. As for Valerie, stalker was increasingly becoming an appropriate label for the girl.

There'd been an odd light in the dhampir's face lately, and Sasuke wondered if he'd have to be concerned about it further down the line. But for now at least it wasn't an issue, so he put it out of his mind to concentrate on the now.

"Can I at least get up?" Sasuke prodded, trailing his fingers over the hyper-soft sheets and pushing back the faint nausea the overpowering smell of lemon laundry detergent gave him. It was enough to give him a bit of a headache, but he didn't feel like he was going to pass out by any means. He was stronger than that.

The bed shifted again, and then like stars winking into existence the bright yellow irises of Koneko's eyes burned in the shadows. The nekomata must have been lazing around in the state between sleep and awareness herself, Sasuke realized, for him not to see her gaze before now.

"If you want." The dark rims of Koneko's pupils contracted slightly, and then she was moving without bothering to wait for his demand. Her small hands forcefully rolling Sasuke upright so that he stood swaying in the darkness. "The Hokage didn't order any bedrest."

Sasuke rolled his shoulders, searching for any kinks left behind by his day unconscious. "Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission?" He cracked his knuckles, watching as Koneko's sunlight stare floated back into his line of sight. "I had no idea you were such a rebel, Kitty Cat-chan."

"I just told you the truth. Your own delinquency or lack-thereof is on your shoulders." Koneko's gaze narrowed into impish yellow slits. "And considering your history as a felon, I would say there is nothing someone like me could do to restrain your sense of utter degeneracy."

Half-heartedly swiping through the darkness at her eyes, Sasuke smirked as Koneko's only visible feature retreated warily. "Be careful what you say, or it might come true."

"Resorting to violence against women?"

"You do realize that I'll repay every insult with interest?" Sasuke drawled, letting thin trickles of chakra flow back into his eyes now that he was satisfied he wasn't about to fall to pieces. The crimson of the Sharingan blazed, and his headache redoubled, but he could finally see with his own true eyes.

Quirking an eyebrow at the activation of his bloodline limit, Koneko shrugged and motioned towards the door with her chin. It was a soundless invitation to finally step out of the confines of his bedroom, even if they were both sporting pajamas and sleep-tousled hair. Without explanation she understood exactly what he wanted, and offered it without reservation.

The hunger to explore the world in a living body - finally feeling with all his senses after a month of deprivation - struck Sasuke, and without a word he slipped around the short form of his friend to pad towards the door. She followed close behind him, but Sasuke knew that she would.

Wood scraped against the soles of his bare feet and the palms of his hands as he shoved through the door and stumbled out into the hallway, but Sasuke didn't care. Even that faint irritation was its own form of pleasure, and he silently promised never to take his sense of touch for granted again.

Squinting down the empty corridor, Sasuke hummed. "What time is it?" Compared to Naruto he had a much less significant role in directing the functions of government, but he could still be accosted by some idiot bureaucrat if he wandered aimlessly. At that moment he just wanted some time to himself, perhaps out in the garden where he could breath in the rich scents of a dozen different species of flowers.

"Quarter to ten at night." Her answer was cool and smooth, but Koneko stared at Sasuke's back with heated sharp focus. It was an expression that spoke of her quiet regard, the unyielding kinship that lay beneath her undemonstrative façade. If Sasuke showed any signs of being overwhelmed, he had no doubt she'd try to muscle him back to his convalescence.

Pleased that the halls would be mostly empty, Sasuke made a direct beeline towards the nearest empty bedroom with a balcony. There were no pampered civilians around to titter at the barbarity of shinobi, and the Uchiha fully intended to take advantage of it.

Treading through a painfully bland room with a tan and white color scheme, Sasuke threw open the patio doors and vaulted over the railing. He landed in the grass two stories below with a rustle, and a silent thump let him know Koneko had followed him.

Cool grass slipped up between Sasuke's toes, slightly damp with moisture, and it was glorious.

"I didn't take you for a flower girl." Sasuke pointed out snidely, following the garden path and inhaling the slightly spicy aroma of a brace of Stargazer lilies. His headache intensified, and Sasuke knew he was pushing the boundaries of what he might be psychologically prepared to handle after a month of living in deprivation, but he pushed on. "But maybe you're less of a masculine tomboy than I thought."

Koneko lightly punched Sasuke in the lower back, and then shoved him to the side so she could walk alongside him. "There's nothing wrong with a _woman_ enjoying flowers. However, it brings into question a man's sexuality when _he_ does." She shot back cuttingly.

"Alright, you got me. My entire life has just been a Freudian attempt to repress my crazed cock lust and incestuous obsession with Naruto. I come out to the gardens to water them with my tears and moan in misery."

The amused splutter Koneko made prompted Sasuke to choke out his own laugh, and before he knew it they were howling with mirth. In fact, with more humor than the joke really called for. But Sasuke supposed they couldn't help it after a month of blood and iron. It was good just to unwind a little.

"Well in that case I'm sorry to say I'm going to have to break your heart again." Koneko sighed with mock sympathy after her laughter stopped. She pointed vaguely up towards the galleries that were lined around the eastern wall of the former daimyo's garden.

Following her motion with his eyes, Sasuke blinked once before shaking his head in disgust.

Standing in plain sight and totally absorbed with one another were Naruto and Valerie. In fact, they were dancing some half-assed waltz with enough enthusiasm that Sasuke wondered if they were even still sober.

Koneko tilted her head and regarded her friend with the blandest look she could muster. "Woe unto Uchiha Sasuke." Then she lay her hand across her forehead and mimed fainting with despair.

Clicking his tongue at the mockery, Sasuke tore a handful of sunflower petals off the nearest bush and threw them in Koneko's face. "At least they're not parking the beef bus in tuna town." He deadpanned, turning to a tactlessness that would have his mother in tears if she were still alive.

A look of absolute revulsion rippled across Koneko's face, and Sasuke smirked in victory. "I'm sorry, did I taint your poor virgin ears? It's okay, I suppose you had to find out sometime. You see Koneko, when a man and a woman love each other very much…"

Koneko just punched him in the kidney.

* * *

In the end, Naruto's cautious desire to remain in the shinobi world for another month proved prophetic.

Two and a half weeks after the bijuu had been hidden away in one of Kagura's dimensions, Naruto found that his days were growing less busy. Sasuke had forced the fealty of the major and minor powers for him. He was done haggling over the details of a twenty year plan to annex the various protectorates to Hi no Kuni with Shikamaru. And having set up circle after circle of curse mark bound underlings, he was reduced mostly to waiting and watching.

Which was pretty fucking monotonous, if he were entirely honest.

Sighing explosively, Naruto scratched his chest before popping the nearest sealed scroll open with a flick of his thumb. "Getting' pretty good at this one-hand thing." he muttered to himself, more to break the silence than anything. "Is it too much to ask that I get a damn radio or something in here?"

Brush strokes on rice paper were revealed to his eyes, and Naruto found himself squinting at the page with suspicion. Apparently the number of bandits roaming the countryside of Yuki no Kuni had exploded once he declared a hard limit for the number of troops each protectorate could maintain. Koyuki had decided to write him an overly friendly personal appeal to double her country's limit.

Pursing his lips, Naruto began to fumble around his desk for a calligraphy brush. "Thanks, but no thanks." He'd placed those limits in the puppet states for a _reason_ – namely, to prevent any of them from being able to fight back against the Kage junta. True, the disarmament was only beginning, but the end result would leave all the other militaries on the continent pretty pathetic.

Besides, he hadn't heard any reports from his own sources that crime was actually increasing because of his new policies, so it was probably just a lie to delay the disarmament. Naruto wouldn't be surprised if Koyuki just thought he was that same naïve kid she knew thirty years ago. No doubt if he'd agreed he'd be getting all sorts of follow up letters from every halfwit from Suna to Kumo telling him all about the newest crime wave.

Naruto finally managed to find an ink-brush, and clicking in thought he wondered just how he could say he wasn't swallowing Koyuki's bullshit in a relatively polite way. In the end, before he could even set ink to paper, the blond was interrupted by a heavy knock at the door.

"It's open!"

The door handle rattled a few times before Shikamaru managed to get it open, slipping in sideways with both hands carrying trays of sandwiches. "Yo." He greeted, kicking the door back closed with a heel and then sauntering over towards Naruto. "I got a message you probably should take a look at, and I figured it was time for a break anyway."

"Well that sounds ominous." Naruto rolled his eyes and pushing Koyuki's letter away so he could take a bite of his ham and cheese sandwich without getting crumbs all in everything. "You make this?"

Wrinkling his nose at the unchewed food he could see, Shikamaru shook his head. "Don't talk with your mouth open. I'd rather not throw up all over the paperwork and have to do it over. And no, Chojuro did."

That made Naruto stop short, and his eyebrows climbed towards his hairline. " _Chojuro_ did?" The dictator eyed the sandwich clutched in his hand suspiciously, as if it would sprout cockroach legs and start scuttling away. "And it's safe to eat?" It wasn't that Naruto thought Chojuro was a bad guy, but the clumsy goofball of his memories didn't exactly give the impression of culinary genius.

"It's a sandwich dumbass, not a five-course meal. And even if it was, Chojuro got pretty famous in the last couple of years for his cooking skills. So yes, it's fine to stuff down your gullet."

Naruto made a soft noise of comprehension. "Huh. The more you know." Then he shrugged and took another bite, making sure to swallow before speaking again. "Anyway, so what shitstorm came in today? I doubt you just decided to bring me a snack out of the goodness of your heart."

It was a bit callous to say, but true. They weren't friends anymore that would just do nice things for that reason alone, and the Naruto that Shikamaru knew from their boyhood was the kind of man that could be buttered up with good food.

Shikamaru didn't even bat an eyelash at the roundabout coldness, just wiping the strawberry jam away from his lips with a thumb. "Right well, the exact list of details is in here." He patted a thin scroll poking out from his vest pocket. "But the long and short of it is that a few of the old daimyo and the samurai have been putting feelers out for an assassination plot."

"Well it's about damn time." Naruto barked a laugh and held out his hand for the scroll. Everything had been shaping up so smoothly for him that it was almost unnerving. Any attempts at rebellion wouldn't go anywhere with both Naruto and Sasuke ready to crush them, but he'd still expected at least _someone_ to try.

Yanking the scroll open with a yank, Naruto winced at the ripping sound the fragile paper made. "Whoops." He mumbled, folding back the tear and carefully smoothing it back into place. Once all the kanji were properly lined up, they spelt out a list of names and dates.

Well, it looked like they had some busy bees buzzing about. Most of the seventeen names were unfamiliar, but he recognized the family name of the old Hi no Kuni daimyo; and Koyuki had already been working her way up his shit list. "Where'd you get the info?"

Shikamaru slipped a cigarette between his lips and lit up, sucking a lungful of acrid smoke as his de facto boss scanned over the list. "A few different sources. The usual ANBU spies, some undercover double agents, that sort of thing. It's legitimate, if that's what you're worried about." The jounin answered, looking like some absurd dragon with white streamers puffing from his nostrils.

"Nah, I was just curious." While it was possible that Shikamaru was ballsy enough to try and trick Naruto with fake conspiracies, Naruto didn't really see the point of it. Shikamaru was also one of his curse seal branded bureaucrats, so it was against the man's own best interests to sabotage the next order. Destabilizing the new regime and causing a war would get the Nara killed off pretty quickly.

"So how do you want to handle it?"

Cocking an eyebrow at the other man, Naruto leaned back in his leather armchair and gave him a piercing look. "While I could figure something out, aren't you the strategist? If you didn't walk in here with at least ten different ways to deal with this, I'd eat my own socks."

Shikamaru snorted a chuckle, avoiding choking on his cigarette with the ease that came from long years of practice at the addicting habit. "Fair enough. I just didn't want you to feel like I was trying to pull your strings by speaking first."

The way his former friend spoke so plainly was refreshing compared to all the other simpering idiots that walked around on eggshells, and with a grin Naruto motioned for him to go on.

"Strategically, I believe the best choice would be to play a bit of a long game. Let these guys keep meeting up, gathering allies, et cetera. In half a year or so they'll have tempted the rats out of the woodwork, and we can just swoop in at the point and get them all in one sweep."

It was a good plan, Naruto had to admit. Very tactical. Just let the entire opposition gather themselves and then crush them all at once. There was just one fatal flaw, and that was that Naruto didn't plan to still be in this world in six months.

Give it another two weeks or so and he'd be gone. He'd already made the appropriate noises about not wanting to actually run anything, so it shouldn't be a shock once he stepped down with a vague promise of living out of the public eye while keeping an quiet eye on things.

So what to do? Naruto supposed that he could just tell Shikamaru to think up something else, or even send someone to find Sasuke so he could get his best friend's input. But that wasn't right – he couldn't just keep running to other people to make up for his weaknesses.

No, Naruto had to solve this on his own.

Silence hung in the office as Naruto stared off into the distance, deep in thought as he tried to look back on all the lessons he'd gotten from his new mother and new grandfather. Grayfia and Zeoticus had practically crammed politics down his throat in his second childhood.

"You should decide how much cruelty will be necessary and get it all over with at once."

"What?"

Clenching his jaw, Naruto hardened his heart. And when he refocused on his advisor his eyes were burning with a pitiless blue flame. "Round them all up. Then root through the prisons and find maybe forty or fifty of the worst scum you can get. Kid rapists or whatever. Once you get them all together we'll declare them as guilty of conspiracy to assassinate the Kage, and then publicly burn them alive."

* * *


	15. Chapter 15

Naruto's heart thudded in his chest, galloping at a race as he smoothed clammy palms over the orange silk hakama he'd donned. The crisp blue diamonds embroidered into his formal dress darkened with the stain of moisture, but there was no time to fuss over the stupid little details like that. He had an appointment with destiny to get to.

Breathing deeply, the kyuubi jinchuurki fought for an icy state of calm. He was getting exactly what he'd asked for, what he'd fought for against Sasuke's objections and Valerie's worried eyes. He was the man that would stand on the podium unflinchingly as seventy so-called traitors were burned alive one by one.

There was no time for second guesses and reluctance now.

"Let's go."

Sasuke just stared, his eyes as dark as the night and inscrutable expression on his pale features. They'd argued fiercely, not over Naruto's policy itself but over the optics. Over and over Sasuke had insisted that he was better suited to serve the role of the villain handing out hard justice, while Naruto was the kind face that won hearts.

As a team they were an iron fist hidden in a velvet glove, and it was only after wrangling out a promise that Naruto would be more image conscious back in Gehenna that Sasuke finally caved.

"Fine." The Uchiha eventually frowned, his mouth drawing tight. "Just don't get used to it."

"Sure thing, _Mom_." Naruto spat, shoving past his stubborn friend.

Regardless of what Sasuke thought, Naruto had been the one to apply Machiavellian principles to the new regime in the world of shinobi. So witnessing those principles in action was just the right thing to do. If he was going to wander into the darkness he should at least have the balls to keep his eyes open.

Even if it would destroy the reputation of Uzumaki Naruto as a pacifist with a heart of gold.

"We have a couple more days here. The month is almost over. Can you just fucking get off my back about it?"

Sighing explosively, Sasuke muttered an agreement. Once Naruto had his heart set on something it was nearly impossible to change his mind, and even after weeks of both Sasuke and Valerie trying the blond was still determined to go through with it. The Uchiha knew when to cut his losses. "I made sure all the Kage were off the field today."

"Good. We want to keep _their_ hands clean, or at least keep them from getting any dirtier."

Let only their names be stained with horror and the blood of criminals. Maybe then people would think twice about turning to Naruto or Sasuke to solve all the problems of the world.

They came at last to a great gold gilded set of double doors, painted in vivid scarlet and carved with designs of coiling dragons.

"Last chance."

"Fuck off."

Naruto squared his shoulders and stepped out into the courtyard.

The low buzz of a thousand muttering throats greeted him, and the entire public square was packed to the brim with dirt-stained peasants. Smothering the urge to nervously scratch the back of his head, Naruto proceeded along the white cobblestone path that lay in front of the palace.

A scaffold had been built so that Naruto could stand with Sasuke at his side, speaking to the crowd before sentencing the so-called rebels to a horrific death. And as Naruto climbed the steps he wondered at how the fuck they'd come to _this_.

The only thing Naruto had ever wanted as a child was to be loved by his friends and to protect them. Yet here he was, a secret dimension traveler taking up the mantle of iron-hearted dictator.

Licking his dry lips with a sticky tongue, Naruto held up a hand and began to speak. "My fellow citizens – no, my brothers and sisters…"

To his dying day Naruto would never be quite sure what he'd said up on that stage before the frightened eyes of thousands of civilians and probably a few hundred shinobi. The only thing he could process was the cold sweat on his palms and the racing thunder of his heartbeat in his ears as he looked down.

Kazahana Koyuki stared back up at him, her pale blue eyes bleary above the thick gag covering her mouth. A great concrete stake had been thrust up by a Doton jutsu so that one by one the prisoners could be tied up and burnt before the eyes of the public, and his old friend was the first on the block.

 _This_ was the moment when everything changed forever. Naruto had wept and raged and clutched at the last fraying lines connecting him to the past, before coming to the decision that it was time to let go. And he'd tried, oh he'd _tried_ to move forward, but words weren't action.

Now Naruto was taking action, and there was no coming back from this.

At least he'd secretly had them all drugged so deeply they wouldn't truly feel the pain of their grisly ends. It was nowhere near absolution, but at least it was something.

Naruto swallowed thickly, but he managed to keep the expression on his face cool and remote as he glanced over at Sasuke. He wasn't just a man standing in front of the crowd, from now on he was more, and he needed to act the part. "Do it."

Rather than try to argue one more time, Sasuke simply obeyed. He wove hand seals with the firm steadiness of years of training as a shinobi and a heart that was made of iron. Chakra flowed through him, gathering in the Uchiha's lungs before exploding from his throat in a great ball of fire.

The Gokakyu struck Koyuki with concussive force, the oil-soaked wood she'd been surrounded with going up in a roaring blaze. In one heart-wrenched moment she'd been there, as beautiful as the day Naruto had first met her, and in the next she was nothing more than cooked meat and sizzling bone.

Distantly, as if it was on the very edge of his hearing, Naruto became aware of a low moan of shock and despair. A wordless howl erupted from the throat of some horrified bystander, and it struck to the heart of him like an arrow. How had it come to this? He'd spent his entire life striving against monsters, and now he had become one.

Naruto had gazed too long into the abyss, and now it had seeped inside of him.

"Next."

One by one the drugged prisoners would dragged up to the pillar and weighed down with rope and oil-soaked wood, and again and again Sasuke destroyed them with explosive fireballs. The very air itself became saturated with the choking scent of death and ash, but they carried on with their sentence to the very end.

Finally, after indeterminable hours that ran together and left behind only a mind-shredding numb horror, Sasuke spat out the last stream of flame. The Uchiha's lips had dried out and start weeping blood as a consequence of his unnecessarily powerful choice of execution technique. But he took the pain with the knowledge that the Gokakyu was delivering the quickest death.

As the flames died away they left behind soot stained cobblestones and a pile of charred bone fragments. Naruto studied the gore with a clinically detached facade on his face, drawing on every reserve of mental strength he had to avoid shattering into pieces before the crowd. Then he looked up, and spoke with the ice cold promise of the grave.

"Thus always to traitors."

Turning his back on the terrified citizenry, Naruto tried not to let the way his own guards hastily averted their eyes bother him. He was every inch the unruffled tyrant, his hands calmly folded in the sleeves of his kimono, looking just at home surrounded by the massacred as he would at a tea party.

The charade lasted until Naruto returned to the palace gardens, the doors slamming shut behind him and Sasuke with an echoing finality.

"Fuck." Sasuke wheezed, massaging at his throat with a grimace. "Let's not do that again."

Silence hung thick in the air as Naruto turned around and stared at Sasuke incredulously. Then the blond began to laugh, doubling over and sinking to the ground as his hysterical chuckles mingled with bitter tears.

Naruto heaved, spewing sour vomit into the grass with a choking gasp. Again and again he purged his stomach, sweating and weeping and choking. He folded over in silent misery, not even bothering to wipe the drool from his chin.

In the end it was Valerie that came to him, appearing to clean the sick from his face and run her hands through his damp sunshine strands. "It's alright. Everything is going to be alright. You don't have to do this ever again. We're going home tomorrow."

Which was perfect, because Naruto knew that he'd been bled dry already. He had nothing left to give this broken country.

* * *

The new moon shrouded the night in a darkness broken only by faint stars and the guttering flames of torches. Sasuke was sure there was some sort of cosmic poetry to be found there, but he didn't care to think too deeply on it. The heavy shadows concealed them as they scaled the palace walls and fled into the wilderness, and that was really all Sasuke wanted.

"You better not have forgotten anything."

"There's nothing in this world I want." Koneko shot back cattily, her soft voice cutting over the chirping crickets. The nekomata's sour assertion was a bit too bitter, but she wasn't wrong. There was nothing the four of them wanted to bring back to Gehenna from this world. The memories were just too strong and too damning.

Sasuke didn't bother to wait for Naruto or Valerie to reply back to him. The former was too wrapped up in his despair over lost innocence and the latter too consumed with caring for him. Even after they completed their escape from the world of shinobi Sasuke knew they'd carry the marks of it with them.

Let Naruto have his time to wallow for now. Soon enough the man would have to stand tall once more. Gehenna was a country that didn't forgive weaknesses or sentimentality.

Leading the way over the dew-soaked grass fields, Sasuke kept his eyes peeled for curious farmers or wary animals. They'd all dressed up in heavy cloaks with hoods so no one would instantly recognize them, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Rumors of the legendary Uzumaki Naruto fleeing the capitol could be a disaster for the regime they were leaving behind.

Eventually they passed over a river and began to scale up a rocky outcropping, Sasuke setting his focus unerringly on the snow-capped peak he could see glinting like a white flame in the dimness.

Sasuke had memorized the path back and forth from the nearest mountain over the past month, so he knew exactly where to go. He'd had to travel over and over to weaken the barriers between dimensions so that he could take them all to that damn desert realm without passing out from the strain of it.

The further they silently climbed, the colder and windier it became, until they were all chattering at the chill with pale mist seeping from their mouths.

Frost crunched under their heels as the path became more and more frozen, so that by the time they ascended to the flat peak their boots were soaked with snowmelt.

"Just in time." Valerie sighed, squinting her vermillion gaze towards the equally blazing red eastern horizon.

They'd travelled unseen through the night, but daylight would have been a different story, and people would have _talked_ about seeing a gang of suspiciously dressed travelers fleeing to the north of the capitol.

Turning to the dawn, Sasuke breathed in deeply.

For dozens of generations, right back to the days of Indra, the Uchiha had salted the ground of Hi no Kuni with their blood. His father had once told him when he was a child that the fire of the land came from the fire in their veins. The very soil of this land had once called him home. It still did, but sometimes it was time to let go of the past in order to move into the future.

Sasuke harshly shoved a tide of chakra into his left eye, clenching his jaw at the sting. Ebony yielded to the scarlet of the Sharingan and then finally to the vibrant lavender of the Rinnegan.

"Are you ready?" he asked, addressing the group as a whole, even if everyone knew there was only one true target for his question.

Grunted an agreement, Koneko folded her arms and turned to look over at Valerie.

The dhampir frowned but nodded, settling a comforting hand on her King's shoulder. "Naruto?"

"Yeah." Naruto whispered, considering the rising sun painting the land just as Sasuke had a moment past. Salty tears glittered on his cheeks as the blond unashamedly grieved, his hand hanging limply and making no motion to wipe at his eyes. "Let's go."

The weave between dimensions parted with a stuttering rip, the very essence of reality seeming to peel back and distort the light. All that was left in the empty space was the abyssal nothing, a teeming thick cloud of not-being that stood taller than Sasuke himself. "You three need to pass through first."

Eying the black and violet hole between the worlds with a suspicious mien, Koneko hesitated.

Sasuke couldn't blame her, since his space-time ninjutsu didn't exactly look like the fast lane to Disneyland.

Eventually the white-haired girl squared her shoulders and ducked on through with sturdy steps.

Valerie stood around staring at Naruto with a distressed twist to her pretty features, and maybe if he couldn't feel his chakra bleeding away he'd be a bit more sympathetic to her obvious distress. As it was, Sasuke just snapped at her to move her ass.

Glaring at the Uchiha poisonously, Valerie shook her head and practically stomped through the portal.

And then there were two.

Naruto fisted his hand in the dark cotton of his cloak, fiddling with the hem. "Is this really okay?" he wondered, shuffling towards the portal. But it was too late to turn back now, and they both knew it, so without waiting for Sasuke's reply the blond stepped into the void.

Preparing himself for the choking sensation of moving through heavy oil, Sasuke followed, emerging into a land of simmering hot sands with a clear blue sky.

Sasuke cut the flow of chakra to his Rinnegan off decisively, sagging with relief as the dimensional doorway flickered and faded away. It felt like throwing off a brace of chains, and the Uchiha breathed easier without the drain.

"Isn't this a bit desolate?" Koneko sighed, shading her face from the sun that was beating down relentlessly. "It's better than oceans of acid or green skies, but it's not exactly welcoming."

Kicking at the pale sand, Naruto seemed to come part of the way back to himself. With all chances of retreat taken away, the only thing the man could do now was press forward.

"No." he demurred, spinning slowly in place to see if he could catch sight of one of the other bijuu roaming around. "Between the nine of them they have enough power and jutsu to terraform this place. I guess they just haven't gotten around to it yet."

"There wasn't much of a choice." Sasuke pointed out, watching warily as Naruto flopped down on his back in the sand and waved them away. All of Kaguya's dimensions were unwelcoming, but the desert one was the one that resembled Earth most closely, and so would be the easiest for the bijuu to work with. "It was the best of a bad option."

Koneko opened her mouth to continue the conversation, hoping to cut through some of the tension that had been hanging over their group for days, but the words were snatched from her mouth when the air abruptly filled with red wind and a shrieking pillar of orange light.

Cursing under his breath at Naruto's bullheadedness, Sasuke looped an arm around each girl's waist and pulled them close. Then he called on his Susanoo, casting a ghostly purple ribcage into existence to shield them from the maelstrom.

His idiot best friend had gone with quick and dirty when it came to releasing Kurama, which meant all the power of the greatest of the bijuu was crackling out into the atmosphere in the space of a minute. It also meant that beneath the gale and flare Naruto was probably screaming himself hoarse from the agony.

All that the trio could do with huddle and bear through the hurricane until it subsided as quickly as it came, Kurama's chakra dispersing through the atmosphere.

Sasuke hoped that Naruto had managed to say goodbye to the great furball, because now it would be at least a decade before the bijuu reformed in the physical plane.

As soon as the show was over, Valerie wrenched herself away and dashed through Sasuke's circle of protection. "You're welcome." He muttered snidely as she rushed to Naruto's side, grunting when Koneko just elbowed him in the gut.

"Don't be so dramatic."

Rolling his mismatched eyes, Sasuke turned away from the two lovebirds that were probably whispering sweet nothings to each other to pin Koneko with an expectant glare. "Well we're all done here, so get to it."

"Fine."

Then they waited, silent seconds ticking by.

"I _said_ get a move on."

Koneko shoved a hand down the front of her pale blue t-shirt. "I already did it, you _moron_." She growled, whipping out an onyx stone suspended on a silver necklace. A pale red light flickered in the jewel's depths, but Sasuke had no time to ponder the burn of her magic because the nekomata threw it at him.

The stone hit Sasuke smack dab in the middle of his forehead, bouncing off and landing in the sand with a dry little smack. Sighing at the indignity of it all, Sasuke went to scoop the precious little magical gem up.

Only to curse violently when it skittered away from his fingertips, flying through the air to land in a tiny pale hand with an echoing slap.

"I believe that belongs to me, thank you." Ophis deadpanned, and then effortlessly crushed the stone to powder.


	16. Chapter 16

"It is best if you take hands."

Naruto looked at Ophis, shifted his focus down to the stump hanging off his right shoulder, and then back to the silver-eyed girl. "Right." He snorted, wriggling the few inches of arm he had left around in his sleeve. "I'll get right on that."

Blinking slowly at his sarcasm, Ophis took three dainty steps forward and gently laid her palm against Naruto's stomach. "You may have it your way then."

Pain hit Naruto's belly like he'd been kicked in the gut by a horse, and everything went dark as he fell backwards through sand and shadow and suffocation. He couldn't breathe – he couldn't even inhale!

He was dying, his heart stuttering out a last staccato in the void.

Then light burst back in and Naruto landed ass first on a gilded antique Venetian table, smashing right through with a thundering crash. "Bitch." He moaned, rolling onto his side and laying his cheek on the splinter covered rug. "Did you really have to go that far?"

"Yes."

Cracking open a baleful azure eye, Naruto outright glared at the unapologetic girl who stood by the fireplace.

Sprawled in a heap at her feet was a mixture of limbs that he knew belonged to his friends, and Naruto would bet a pretty penny they'd suffered _almost_ as much as he did passing through the gap between universes.

Sasuke groaned, his face grey as he shoved off Valerie and Koneko so he could climb back to his feet.

Naruto met his best friend halfway, limping across the lounge. "Home sweet home, eh?" he grumbled out of the corner of his mouth, absently extending a hand to his Bishop as he warily glanced at Ophis.

In truth he wasn't sure how to feel about the Ouroboros Dragon. On the one hand it would be easy to scapegoat her for all his problems. If not for her meddling he'd have never left Konoha. Maybe he could have stopped the war from ever beginning. Maybe he could have built something different. Something better than the dictatorship he'd left behind.

On the other, it was because of Ophis that he'd had a second chance at living. Without Ophis there would be no Naruto Gremory. He had a new family. He'd met Ravel and Valerie because of her.

If she hadn't stuck her nose in, who knew where they'd all be right now? He probably have been railroaded into marrying Hinata. Sasuke would probably still be off wandering like a hobo. Rias would probably have to marry Riser. Or maybe Rias would rebel against her arranged marriage and run off with some human boy? Maybe she'd get so desperate she'd hook up with a perverted screaming man-child.

Naruto paused at that thought.

Nah. Wouldn't happen.

"Where is everyone?" Sasuke muttered, cracking his neck as he pushed past the group and peered out the window.

Turning his thoughts away from his undefined relationship with Ophis and the consequences of it, Naruto followed and peered through the glass as well. "It sure is a ghost town out there." He noted, scanning over the familiar gardens of Starling Hall. "Usually there'd be at least _someone_ out trimming."

Koneko snorted indelicately. "We weren't about to keep servants around while Rias dabbled in soul magic to play both your roles. It _is_ illegal."

"And dangerous." Naruto pointed out sharply, before blowing a gusty sigh through his nostrils and letting it go. There was no point in tearing a strip off of Koneko for it. She hadn't been the one to make that call anyway. "Nevermind. Let's just go find them."

It was easier not to think on the empty gaping hole that Kurama left behind when he had something _concrete_ to do. Naruto didn't have to agonize over the right choices or the future wars that would inevitably return to Konoha if he had a simple A to B task to accomplish.

This was his life now. He just needed to find his groove again. Somehow.

The bright gold of Koneko's gaze darkened to inscrutable amber as she considered Naruto's war-scarred body and Sasuke's sharp edged expression, but she didn't try to bar their way. Instead she just shrugged noncommittally and strode out the door.

Biting into the flesh of his cheek until the copper taste of blood sparked across his tongue, Naruto forced his mouth into a bitter smile and followed.

There was a sensation of the utterly surreal when _Ophis_ of all people quietly filed in, and Naruto tried to ignore the itching feeling that tickled across his spine. The Dragon Goddess might have some say in what went on in the Gremory house because of her interference, but Naruto was only willing to give her so much control.

Giving into his own enslavement was no way to build an empire.

Despite the tension that hung thick in the air, Koneko didn't betray them, and Naruto found himself standing in his own bedroom floundering while he wondered just _what in the fuck was actually going on_. "Where in the hell is Rias?" he demanded, looking at his own motionless body and trying to swallow back the urge to vomit.

It just _wasn't_ right, seeing himself just laying there like he was dead. It made Naruto nauseous.

"Not here." Ophis murmured, her eyebrows drawing tight as she looked through the material world and cast her senses out across the spiritual. "They're in their own bodies at the moment, which is ideal for you."

Turning away from the flame-haired body he'd once considered his own, Naruto tried to ignore the way that his face had melted into skin and bone. There was no fat or excess flesh left behind in his second body; only skin and bone.

It didn't project strength or call him home in the way that he'd hoped.

"So how do you want to do this?" Naruto prodded, letting his eyes automatically seek out his devil body.

It took supreme effort to tear his stare away. Naruto was at least for the moment a man of the shinobi world, dealing only with chakra and not magic.

Threading her hands together, Ophis sought out Sasuke's gaze, looking for the first time unsure. "Your bodies are at the moment unoccupied and ready to host your souls. Shifting your consciousnesses should be relatively simple now that you both exist on this place."

Naruto roughly scrubbed at his eyes with the palm of his hand, his mouth pursed with anger. "Don't beat around the fucking bush, yeah?" he cursed, patience gone. "Just tell us what the fuck you need so we can get on with our lives here."

Frigid grey ice conquered Ophis' eyes, and when she stared down Naruto once more it was with an utterly unconcerned mien. "Very well. As I said once before, you and Sasuke once bound as the inheritors of Ashura and Indra. Thus, in order to grasp onto your souls I only need to lay hands on _one_ of you."

"And since chakra isn't compatible with magic, someone needs to die so you can hold onto a soul." Sasuke theorized, sagging with exhaustion.

"That is not quite true." Ophis made a vague circling gesture with her hand, as if she were searching for the right words. A flicker of surprise crossed her face as she took in her oddly human gesture, but she pressed on. "I can push through the chakra to disembody you. It is simply an order of magnitude easier if you died first."

Which made sense, Naruto supposed wearily. Edo Tensei was supposed to only require one living sacrifice to function, and Rinne Tensei only needed one per use as well. Sakura and Gaara had sacrificed dozens of people to bring them back to Konoha. Some of that cost could be attributed up to the distance between universes, but some of it was probably fueling the jutsu to push past the chakra-magic barrier.

Briefly, the blond wondered what it would have been like to bring Kurama with him to Gehenna. The huge furball was a chakra construct himself. The fox would have been disintegrating every time he touched basically anything.

The image of Kurama wailing 'I'm melting!' and turning into a puddle of goo made Naruto's mouth twitch with amusement.

Enough.

Exhaling slowly, Naruto steeled himself. His body was already slowly dying without Kurama – Uzumaki vitality could only take him so far – so he just had to go easy. It would be as simple as going to sleep. "Alright, I'm ready."

"You're a self-sacrificing moron." Sasuke commented acidly, glaring at Naruto with an expression of supreme irritation. "Take a back seat for once, and make sure to change the rug. Rias hates it when blood gets on the carpet."

Valerie grinned in slightly desperate relief. "Don't worry about it. Cleaning up a bit of blood is my speciality."

" _What_?" Naruto goggled, looking from one friend to the next with bafflement.

Instead of responding to the confused blond, Sasuke just laid the flat of his palm over his heart. Then he lit it up, punching straight through with a Chidori Eisou.

* * *

"Look, I know that we've usually tried to deal with things on our own, but this is getting to be a bit too much, isn't it? Maybe you should think about talking to your brother."

" _No_." Rias declared emphatically, running a hand through her ragged mane and violently suppressing the urge to break out in wild frustrated screeching. "We've come too far to quit now, and there's too much riding on our silence."

Scoffing at the denial, Akeno narrowed bloodshot eyes at her best friend. "Alright then." It wasn't the first time the Thunder Priestess had suggested that they reach out for help from devils with much more power and experience than they had, and Rias knew it wouldn't be the last.

It was only to be expected. A few days or weeks playacting that everything was perfectly fine was one thing, but they had spent nearly two months now dabbling in illegal soul magic and shifting bodies to keep up the charade. Rias herself was exhausted on a bone deep level from having to constantly possess her nephew's body, and with smaller reserves Akeno was even more fatigued.

Sooner or later something had to give. Either Naruto and Sasuke came back home, or she and her peerage wouldn't be able to keep lying. They might be devils but they still had their limits, and Rias was reaching hers. She was constantly tired, with daily body aches and what little sleep she could get disturbed by surreal nightmares. It was probably even worse for Akeno.

But Rias had made a promise to Naruto that she'd keep his secrets and not betray him. The entire fragile reconciliation she'd built with her nephew depended on that trust. Maybe it would be easier for her to come clean with the rest of their family, but doing so could destroy the bonds their family had with Naruto. He wouldn't be Naruto Gremory, their young genius, but rather the reborn Uzumaki Naruto and not truly their son.

If Rias turned her back now Naruto may never forgive her.

Not to mention that she'd have to admit that the man she'd come to love was the subject of a highly illegal ritual. Lilith's spells might be lost to time, but criminalizing soul consumption in general was a condition of the armistice with Heaven. Rias loved her family, but she'd grown apart from them, and she didn't know if she could trust them not to turn Sasuke over to the angels for some political benefit.

"Fine. We'll just have to wing it." Akeno sighed, shoulders slumping as they stepped through the front doors of Starling Hall. "As long as we include extra details in the diary Naruto should be able to deal with Kyoto when he comes back."

"Agreed."

The 'diary' was a meticulous account of the various meeting Rias had been forced to pretend to be Naruto at, which she'd started so that once her nephew returned he could step into his role like nothing had happened. It had been mostly minor events and easily forgettable details that Naruto probably didn't even really need to know about.

Until now.

A play date with the only daughter of Kyoto's ruling kitsune seemed like a chance for the adults to play nice while the children toddled around making friends. But a single meeting of that magnitude could change Naruto's entire future.

The burden that hung heavy on Rias' shoulders was enough to choke a weaker willed woman. She hoped she was strong enough to bear it.

"Let's just hope that they're asking for a few positive reviews about their cuisine rather than a reasoned statement about their economic practices."

Rias laughed bitterly, rubbing at the bridge of her nose at she climbed to the second floor. "I suppose we could describe Naruto's sense of taste – he enjoys everything but prefers well-cooked beef above the rest. He's not exactly a fussy kind of man."

Letting the tips of her fingers trails across the tiny grooves that criss-crossed the stairwell's bannister, Rias let her eyes drift shut. She might have to put up with another day of thankless expectation and pretense, but at least she didn't have to step forward with eyes wide open.

"Rias."

Everything stuttered to silence, hanging on that one note as Rias' teal gaze fluttered wide. There was no layered falsehood or teasing bait on that tongue, only naked truth and the aching need for completion. A twinned stare as dark as coal looked down, settled in a sallow face, but Rias knew. She knew him just as she knew the hunger in her bones.

"Sasuke."

Half-shrouded by the winking fluorescent lightbulbs of the manor, Sasuke stood with his face hidden in shadow. The fire of the Sharingan burned in the dimness; two glittering embers offsetting the dusty stillness that had fallen over Starling Hall.

"You're here." Rias stumbled, her eyes blurring with tears as she practically lunged across the landing without any regard for propriety. The crimson-haired girl crashed into Sasuke in a tangle of limbs and desperate flesh. " _You're_ here."

Hot salty tears leaked from the corners of Rias' eyes as Sasuke looped his arms under hers, finding a steady stance that could support both their weights while he stared down into her face.

"You're _here_." She marveled again like a broken record, with desolation lilting her voice.

Two months without Sasuke's steady presence at her back and Rias had forgotten how to function. It had been bad enough when he'd been deployed to the war front, but Rias had been able to reassure herself that they still stood under they same sky. She'd been able to write him letters and have them returned.

There'd been nothing but suffocating worry and absence when he'd been called back to Konoha. She practically forgotten how safe she'd felt knowing that no matter what she had at least one man standing in her corner, backing up her decisions.

And now he'd finally come home.

"I'm here." Sasuke affirmed, tangling his hand in Rias' hair and pressing her face into the hollow of his throat. He might not be the most empathetic person in the world, but Sasuke knew _enough_. He knew how it tainted the very taste of her aura when Rias gave into frustration and despair.

Winding his arm around Rias' waist, Sasuke resisted the urge to crush her against his own chest. That was a wild surge of possessiveness that had no place right now. "I love you." He admitted instead, closing his worn-out eyes and huddling down cheek-to-cheek.

Rias broke down into silent heaving sobs, burying her face in Sasuke's chest as tears streaked down her face, darkening the blue cotton of his shirt. It was a shameful display of weakness that would have the likes of her cousin Silas grinning, but she didn't care. Rias was tired of having to be relentlessly strong.

Looking down at the embracing couple with a fondly exasperated expression, Akeno hooked her thumbs in the pockets of her jeans and smiled. "It's about time." Then a mischievous light entered her gaze. "Although I have to say I'm disappointed I won't be able to give you sponge baths anymore. It really was the highlight of my day. There was so much to play with."

"You're as vulgar as ever." Sasuke grunted, running a soothing hand over Rias' back as her sobs turned into watery laughter. "And I suppose I should add sex criminal to your titles. How does the Violet-Eyed Violator sound?"

Akeno stuck out her lip and pouted. "Oh please. Don't pretend that you don't like it. I would bet a pretty penny that you're going to be touching yourself tonight to the thought of it."

Separating from Sasuke with a last lingering hand on his chest, her fingers feeling the reassuring beat of his heart beneath them, Rias threw a mocking glance over her shoulder at Akeno. "Please don't project your own proclivities on others. It reeks of desperation."

Simply glad to finally see some life come back to Rias' face after the slow death she'd been witnessing for the past couple of months, Akeno allowed her the win. "How did you know?"

The Ruin Princess rolled her eyes, then wiped away the tracks of her tears before finally steeling herself. She just wanted to cuddle up to Sasuke forever, or at least for a few hours, but now was not the time. With her boys home she had real business to attend to. "Where's Naruto?"

Sasuke glanced down the hall pensively, thinning his lips. "He's in the West Wing lounge with Valerie and Gasper. Koneko is off roaming the grounds looking for Yuuto, so we all made it home" he pre-empted when he saw her open her mouth. "But I should warn the both of you that he might not be exactly who you remember."

"Take me to him then. If he's having a crisis of commitment again we had better pull his head out of his ass before Ravel gets back from visiting Riser."

"I wouldn't describe it as a crisis of _commitment_."


	17. Chapter 17

It was three hours to midnight when Ravel finally managed to say her goodbyes to her brother, smiling like nothing at all was wrong before warping herself through the wards and into the lightless foyer of Starling Hall.

The blonde discreetly wiped her palms on the skirt of her blue sundress, trying to steady her rattling nerves and slow the frantic beating of her heart. Naruto had _finally_ come back, and it was only a cautious suggestion from Rias over the communication spell that convinced her to play it safe and act like nothing was wrong while visiting her brother.

Riser was a friend of their group, but he wasn't part of their inner circle, and so he wasn't allowed to know Naruto's secret other life. It hurt her to think she couldn't truly rely on her favourite brother anymore, but Ravel knew that Naruto's secrets weren't hers to share.

Squaring her shoulders, Ravel took one last steadying inhale, and then climbed the winding stairs up to the third floor.

As the scattered members of the two Gremory peerages trickled back into the manor, Rias had shifted the gathering to the long gallery and fired off a short message to Ravel about it twenty minutes ago. The Bishop would be the last to arrive, a fact that kind of irked her. But there wasn't anything to be done. It was just bad luck that brought her fiancé back on the weekly Thursday evening visit she paid to her brother.

The soft chatter of voices broke the silence as Ravel crossed the house, growing louder with every step she took into the bowels of the manor.

"Look, I'm not trying to run your show or anything, I'm just telling you what I think."

Ravel paused as Naruto's exasperated sputter passed through the door, smiling at the sound and feeling a bone-deep satisfaction. It had been too long since she'd heard him speak.

Knocking loudly to announce herself, Ravel stepped into the lavish den. "Good evening, degenerate rabble-rousers. What's on the menu this time? Crowning my eventual aunt-in-law Queen of the Winter Court?"

The sharp bark of laughter Naruto made didn't seem to surprise anyone else there, but to the newcomer it seemed off somehow. A little too hard and cynical, perhaps, and Ravel reluctantly shifted her gaze towards Valerie.

Lounging in a cozy green armchair with one leg thrown over the side, the dhampir woman clutched a clear goblet of blood in one hand. The ruby shade of her eyes seemed deeper somehow, and when she raised the glass in wordless salute to her fellow Bishop there was a contentment in her face that made Ravel's blood boil.

What exactly had her fiancé and her _dear_ fellow Bishop gotten up to while they were ranging the plains of the shinobi world?

Ravel took hold of that jealousy with an iron grip, folding it up and stuffing it in the back of her mind to simmer. She wouldn't forget it, but she let sleeping dogs lie for now. There were more important matters to deal with.

"Hello Naruto." Ravel smirked instead, crossing the room in three long strides so she could throw herself into his arms for a bone-crushing hug. "Did you miss me, you big baby?" she prodded cockily once he reciprocated, hating the tiny note of vulnerability that rang through the sarcasm.

Rough gravel rasped over Naruto's tone as he murmured a soft _yes_ , unashamedly embracing his fiancé with the thirst for affection that had worked its way into his bones. Sweating and bleeding for Konoha again had left its mark, and the redhead just wanted something purely _good_ for once.

Quirking an eyebrow as the hug went on and on despite the awkward silence that hung in the air, the rest of the devils pretending to be anywhere else, Akeno sent an incredulous look over at Sasuke. "Do you think they'll start rutting right here on the floor?" she mouthed at him, earning a deadpan expression in return.

The pair separated after a final squeeze, Naruto knuckled at one eye while he ruffled Ravel's sunshine strands with his other hand. "Don't be like that." He snorted when she scowled and pulled away, a brittle smile on his face.

Glowering as she tried to return her messed hair to some measure of order, Ravel just threw herself onto the couch between Koneko and Yuuto. "Is anyone going to fill me in, or am I just going to have to guess?"

"Well." Rias began, eyes flicking to Naruto when her nephew leaned back against the wall next to Sasuke. "As you can see Naruto and Sasuke have returned, so we're in the process of trying to decide how to proceed from here."

Yuuto huffed a sigh, leaning ahead on his knees and drilling into the floor with a tired blue-grey stare. "It's not exactly going smoothly."

Which didn't exactly match what she'd expected from the group, if Ravel were honest. One of her fiancé's greatest strengths in her experience had been his ability to generate compromises and direct the collective energy of their disparate group. They'd never exactly done anything to go in the history books, but they've never wasted hours arguing either.

Furrowing her brows in thought, Ravel trailed her focus from one devil to the next, scrutinizing their faces in an instant. Sasuke had a wintery mien, while Rias hovered between contentment and concern. Valerie seemed satisfied where Koneko appeared merely bored. Yuuto was quietly irritated and Gasper just peeked over the lid of his box in innocent confusion. Her fiancé himself seemed frustrated and fatigued.

Too many closed expressions and not enough communication, which was just out and bizarre for a reunion after months apart. It was like they were all standing around not sure what was actually going on.

Ah.

Ravel slapped her forehead, giving a truly mighty roll of her dark blue orbs. "I really and honestly am surrounded by complete and total morons. I'm starting to wonder if the collective IQ in here is stuck in the double digits. Did it ever occur to you that maybe someone should provide a _clear summary_ of where we've been and where we're going?"

Silence reigned as Naruto stared at his fiancé in shock, sheepish contrition creeping its way onto his features until he coughed awkwardly and rubbed at the back of his head. "Fuck, yeah, I guess that would be just the place to start, wouldn't it?" he muttered.

Really, he should have started by actually _telling_ the members of their little extended family what he had planned for Gehenna. Everyone was to a degree aware of his goals, but most of them had only heard about them second or third hand. Not to mention Rias and Akeno were on an entirely different page trying to needle information about the shinobi world out of him.

Everyone had probably walked into the room with different expectations about what would happen, and Naruto hadn't whipped them into shape, which was probably why they'd pissed away a couple of hours talking in circles.

It was just that it was hard for Naruto to string thoughts together, much less reinvent himself into a general at the drop of a hat. He was utterly exhausted. Two months of betrayal, blood, war and torture had compounded. Coming back and finding himself in his new-old body was just the disorienting cherry on the top of the cake.

Maybe such a bald-faced admonishment was the wake-up slap that he needed. So Naruto dug deep, locking up all the desolation for another day and lay hands on the deep black core of iron in his soul.

When he squared his shoulders and met Ravel's stare again, there was nothing left of visible weakness in him. He would become a sword that had passed through the fire and been tempered by it, rather than one that had broken under the pressure.

"One way or another, I'm going to become the King of Hell."

Naruto declared his treason with a steady finality, an electric blaze glittering in his eyes as he looked from one friend's face to the next. Yuuto and Akeno seemed to practically vibrate with vindication, while Ravel and Rias frowned with visible confusion.

Which was just about what he'd expected. Everything Yuuto knew was something the blond knight had heard through the grapevine, but Rias by comparison was actually part of the conspiracy he and Sairaorg had started. His aunt was directly familiar with his former plans to create some kind of democracy in the end.

Cutting off Rias when she went to speak, Naruto threaded his fingers together and tried to project nothing but confidence. "Some of us were born as devils, so they don't know anything different. But those of us who were once human – or at least close to it, know that things can be better than they are."

"Gehenna is rotten." Sasuke sighed, unfolding his arms and hooking his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. The Pawn gave Rias a particular _look_ , silently convincing her to subside without protest. He would answer all of her questions later, when it wasn't interrupting Naruto's appeal to the group.

Nodding at the show of support, Naruto gave Sasuke a sharp-edged grin before turning back to face the rest of the room. "Exactly! It's rotten. And I don't mean from a sort of 'fuck the purebloods' sort of perspective. I mean it's just a fucking _sick_ society. Everyone just gets ahead by stepping on everyone else rather than helping each other. It's all competition and no cooperation."

Naruto seemed to move into his stride then, something like real passion finally unfurling in his breast for the first time in months. "Like come on! Just because the purebloods have most of the magical strength doesn't mean we should be treating the commoners like they're literal serfs. All reincarnated people are by law _slaves_ , what the fuck is that supposed to be?"

With more than half of the people in the room being beings reincarnated through the Evil Piece system, Naruto knew he'd hit the nail on the head. But he needed more. "Or what about the fact that crazy little bastard Diodora can run around raping nuns until their minds break and get away with it just because of his family name?"

"No government is perfect. I learned that the hard way in the other world." The Gremory heir admitted, looking directly at Ravel. With Rias wordlessly agreeing to not derail Naruto, his fiancé was the only one that might object to his new ideas now.

"Sometimes you have to be hard. Sometimes you have to do things that you'll find unethical. Sometimes reality had to come before ideals. But that should be the exception rather than the rule. We can do _better than this_. I know we can."

Yuuto lurched to his feet, a snarl on his handsome face as he glared at Naruto. "So, are you going to tell me then that everything my friends and I suffered for the sake of those damn Holy Swords was acceptable? All that blood and pain was just for the greater good, wasn't it? Or do the ends not justify the means when it's people _you_ care about going under the knife?"

Tension thick enough to cut hung in the air, choking the momentum of Naruto's speech, and he knew it was the moment of truth. Yuuto had so directly challenged him that he couldn't brush it off without appearing to be a callous shithead. If he failed to win over the Knight now the pillar of support he'd been trying to build would split down the middle.

"There is a difference between necessary and pointless cruelty." Naruto murmured, remembering how he'd burnt those criminals and traitors alive in order to try and stabilize the new regime he'd built for Konoha. "You might have to do monstrous things to build a better world, but you can't forget cruelty is a _tool_ , not a trait. If you forget that then you become reduced, you become a monster, and in the end you'll be hated and destroyed."

The Gremory heir could try to beat around the bush or outright lie to Yuuto, but they'd both know that he was avoiding the issue. And trying to do that would only lose him Yuuto's respect and alienate the young swordsman.

"So yes." Naruto stated firmly, his heart in his mouth. "It wasn't wrong for the Church to try to build a safer world on your blood. You even agreed to that sacrifice. But it became wrong when Galilei began tormenting and throwing you away just to satisfy his own sadism."

Naruto wasn't sure he even believed the words falling from his mouth, but this was the path he'd chosen, and it was the one he had to see to the end now.

The muscles of Yuuto's face spasmed into a rictus of hatred, heated and ugly, before smoothing out and leaving cold composure behind.

A composure that was the direct opposite of the boiling venom in Yuuto's voice. "I'll follow you." Then he was in Naruto's face, fisting a hand in the redhead's collar. "But if you _ever_ forget the difference between _necessary_ and _pointless_ cruelty I'll put my sword in your back."

"If I ever forget that, I hope you don't even hesitate."

Maybe it was the utter sincerity that Naruto agreed to Yuuto's threat with, but it was enough for the Knight to quiet down into mutinous silence, letting go of his chokehold and stepping back.

Resisting the urge to reflexively rub at his throat, Naruto let his gaze trail over the remaining members of his and Rias' peerages. Sasuke and Valerie would follow him to the end, he already knew, and he'd gotten Yuuto's reluctant agreement. But that wasn't enough. "And what about the rest of you? Will you follow me?"

It shocked everybody when it wasn't Rias or Ravel, but _Gasper_ that spoke up with uncharacteristic fierceness. "The way our fathers treated Valerie and me – that was wrong. So if you won't let that happen to anyone else, I'll fight with you." The tiny dhampir declared, clutching at the rim of his cardboard box with white-knuckled fingers and a red flush to his cheeks.

Valerie beamed at her adopted brother with approval. "Exactly."

"Well, who am I to disagree after that display of manly courage?" Akeno chuckled, a rough note in her laugh that only Rias heard. The Thunder Priestess sauntered right up to her King, looping their arms together with deceptive cheer. "What's life without a little bit of excitement?"

Patting her best friend's arm with hidden sympathy, Rias met Naruto's questioning look head-on. Unlike Naruto she was perfectly aware of Akeno's inner distress. Her Queen was worried they would all end up tortured and dead like Himejima Shuri had been but wasn't willing to rock the boat when everyone else seemed to be getting on board.

And Rias couldn't blame her. What Naruto was asking them to do was blatant treason. It was one thing to propose a conspiracy where they would legitimately acquire power within the bounds of the law and then use it to reform Gehenna. But it was entirely different to suggest seizing power implicitly by violence. If they failed they would all be executed without a shred of mercy.

In the end however, there was no choice at all. Even if she disagreed Rias wouldn't be able to convince Naruto and Sasuke to drop their crusade. She knew what kind of men they were - visionaries with hearts of iron. The only thing withholding support would accomplish would be to increase the risk of their failure. "Very well."

Which left only Ravel and Koneko, the latter of whom made a vague shooing gesture. "I'm doomed either way, so I might as well make the most of it." The nekomata sighed airily.

Lifting her chin, Ravel folded her arms across her chest, refusing to speak as she stared down her fiancé with an unreadable expression. There was neither approval nor rejection in her sapphire eyes, only patient expectation. She'd given him his moment to convince everyone else.

But she wasn't like them. Ravel wouldn't hold her support hostage, but she demanded at least honesty from him.

Naruto exhaled slowly, idly combing a thick strand of crimson hair away from his face. "That's it for tonight, I think. We can talk more about the specifics once we've had some shuteye. Ravel and I have a few things to talk about anyway."

The underlying request was received loud and clear by everyone, who filed out one by one. The last to go was Valerie, who threw a chilly look over her shoulder at the other Bishop before she left the room.

Pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration, Naruto ruefully wondered how exactly his life had come to _this_. He was one man trying to go up against the might of an empire with nothing but his friends at his back, who also had to try and juggle the emotional demands of two very different women.

Human men might think managing a budding harem was all fun and games, but those assholes had no fucking clue.

"What happened."

Ravel's coldly flat question came out as a statement, making Naruto wince and want to shiver at the sheer frostiness of it. The suspicion and jealousy weren't unfounded, he had to admit, and they certainly weren't pleasant to deal with. But she had a right to those feelings. Gehenna might try to teach its women their job was to happily share a single man, but the heart wants what it wants.

Crossing over to his fiancé with long sure strides, Naruto stopped when there was barely more than a foot of space between them. "It was bad over there." He admitted lowly, remembered despair thinning his mouth. It wasn't exactly a justification, but at least it was an explanation. "I was… lost, I guess, and I needed support."

Not a single muscle in Ravel's face twitched, but something guttered out in her gaze, leaving only a mixture of worldly cynicism and reluctant satisfaction. In the end she knew she couldn't turn away from him – Ravel was tied too deeply to Naruto – and rationally it was exactly what she'd been raised to expect. To have the proof of her upbringing was vindicating in its own way. She had no room to complain.

But that didn't stop Ravel's heart from crumpling up in her chest.

"Thank you." The blonde forced out in a clear tone, crushing any stuttering with pure willpower. "For being honest." Then Ravel turned and stalked away, leaving Naruto alone with the dark storm of his thoughts.


	18. Chapter 18

Rias balanced a tea tray on one hand and a plate of biscuits in the other as she circled around the Olympic length pool that nestled in the backend of Starling Hall's estate. Technically speaking she could easily levitate both tea and cookies with magic alone, but there was something more concrete about actually using her own hands. It provided a grounded feeling she hoped she didn't need.

"A private meeting on a warm summer morning by the pool, with service included. Are you trying to seduce me, my love?"

"You're not as funny as you think you are." Sasuke sighed, letting Akeno's flirtatious look slide off him like water off a duck's back. He was tired, with dark circles shadowing his eyes, but it was much better than the sheer exhaustion that had been creeping up on him yesterday. A good night's sleep had done him well.

Rolling her eyes at her servants' usual banter, Rias delicately slid the tea tray and cookies onto the small round glass patio table. "Would it be too onerous to expect a bit of serenity from the two of you, or will you continue to go at it like cats in heat?"

Akeno made a low mreow, miming a catty swipe at the redhead.

"Lovely." Rias muttered before slipping into her seat. She briefly considered opening the umbrella that poked up from the center of the table but decided against it. There'd been too much darkness of late.

Instead Rias looked across to pin her Pawn with a patient teal stare, noting out of the corner of her eye that a suddenly serious Akeno was doing the same.

Sasuke blinked slowly, shifting his gaze from one woman to the other. He knew it was a feeble attempt to brush aside the horrors of Konoha, but Sasuke also knew that the girls wouldn't be satisfied with half the story.

So he drew in a deep breath, steadying his lungs and heart at the same time, and began.

Trying to smother down the desolation and despair, Sasuke explained how Konoha itself had been destroyed by the alliance of Iwa and Kumo, while Kiri stood on the sidelines playing them all against each other. He described the pure dispossession his people had experienced, wandering in the sands and scrabbling for survival.

In that hopeless wasteland, Sasuke confessed how it made sense for Konoha to look to the darkest of paths in order to simply survive. Konoha had been barely able to crawl back from the brink and claim to be a great power, staining their hands with blood all the while.

In the end, rationally, there had been no choice but to try and resurrect Naruto, hoping he'd be enough to lead Konoha back from the brink. Sasuke was fair enough to admit that what Sakura and Gaara did made sense, even if he and Naruto were the ones that got the shaft.

"Most of the time I felt like an extra." The Uchiha admitted, one hand coming up to fiddle at the buttons that crowned his throat. "They wanted my strength and they wanted my Sharingan, but they didn't really want me. Naruto was their mascot, but I was just a kunai in their pouch."

"If they wanted to throw their entire country on the shoulders of one man, that's on them," Akeno asserted coolly, the purple lightning of her eyes flaring. "You're more than just a weapon, and if they didn't want to see that then it's their loss."

Sasuke quirked the corner of his mouth into an indulgent smirk. It was always something to see when Akeno got worked up and defensive. "Regardless. There was a lot of pain and a lot of suffering to wade through. We personally must have ended at least three hundred lives."

Shrugging with bitter acceptance, Sasuke looked over to clinically examine the slow lapping water of the pool. "Even in the end we didn't really accomplish anything. We just created a global dictatorship and hoped for the best."

Rias narrowed her eyes, turning over the fragmented truths that Sasuke had passed on to her. There was no doubt in her mind that her Pawn had hid the deepest and darkest secrets from her. Doing so was only human nature – nobody _wanted_ to claim weakness. But that meant that she had to guess, and Rias hated guessing. "So after you pulled off your one-sided victory, did the burden of expectation equalize?"

"No." Sasuke snorted, dismissing the entire world of shinobi with a lazy wave. "All chains of command still went directly to Naruto. He barely had a minute to himself to breathe. And since he was always more invested in Konoha than I ever was, everything just compounded until he broke."

"Which is why he's different." Rias exchanged a worried look with Akeno. The two young women weren't Naruto's emotional redoubts by any means, but they cared enough to deal with the man's emotions sooner rather than later. "I assume it's not as simple as a basic policy change."

Laughing in a low tone like broken glass, Sasuke shook his head. How could he even put into words the magnitude of the Will of Fire, and Naruto's apostasy from it? He could compare it to a dozen human religions, quoting gods and varna, but even that wouldn't be quite the same. Hagoromo's teachings had stained the entire ninja world with weakness, and repudiating that wasn't as simple as snapping their fingers.

"Let's just say that even if Naruto's heart has changed, his habits haven't. He'll still eat ramen and play pool with his 'father' on Saturdays. You can expect his basic preferences to be the same, even if his philosophy is moving ahead at all right angles. He should fit right back in, mostly."

Akeno tapped red-painted fingernails over the glass, munching on a biscuit and looking distinctly unsatisfied. "That's pretty vague, don't you think? Things haven't exactly been _static_ here. Expecting that you can just slide in as easy as you please is a bit naïve."

Coal dark eyes skittered off to gaze into the distance. "You can let us worry about that."

Cocking an eyebrow at Sasuke's cool statement, Akeno reached into her cleavage and withdrew a tiny black book. "We could, or we could give you enough information to not get killed on the first day, what will it be?"

"Somehow, I feel like I should be surprised you kept it there, but I'm just _not_."

* * *

"Well you know me. Always looking for a way to catch your eye."

"Are you well rested, Naruto Gremory?"

Snorting at that, the redhead turned away from the library window and glared at Ophis. "Better than yesterday, I guess." He admitted grudgingly.

There was no way in hell that Naruto could be considered anywhere near 'well-rested' after two months of hell followed up by some shoujo manga level developments in his personal life. He hadn't slept well and he'd spent most of the day trying and failing to find his cagey fiancé to try and settle things before a rift could form. But sure, he supposed that it could be worse.

Ophis hummed at that, tracking her grey eyes over the dusty tomes that were spread out over a dozen tables. If the Dragon God thought it was strange to find Naruto in a library, she didn't say anything about it. "We must speak then. Walk with me."

"Why?" Frowning at the tiny shapeshifter's back as she twisted towards the door, Naruto shrugged and slowly followed. "I don't think we've got a lot to say to each other, so what's wrong with here?"

There was a queer touch of uncertainty in Ophis' tone as she replied. "I prefer the walk. As of late, I find it centering." Which was such a purely human thing to say that Naruto almost stumbled with shock. Where the hell was the little girl that had once carelessly proclaimed Sasuke her slave? But before he could say anything, Ophis hardened. "And we have more to speak on than you would assume, Naruto Gremory."

Accepting that the moment of what might have been vulnerability was gone, Naruto kept his mouth shut as they wandered out onto the moonlit lawn.

The petals of a hundred different lilies shone silver in the night, blooming safe from the harsh light of the sun and crowning the grounds with what looked like stars come down to earth. It was an ethereally beautiful thing to see, with the experience only enhanced by the sweet scent that wafted over the warm evening breeze.

Ophis was nowhere near human, but perhaps there were certain sensibilities that all thinking beings shared. In any case, she came to a stop and looked out over the estate with a placidly cool expression.

"I dislike uncertainties. When you and I came to accord you promised me service against Great Red in exchange for three things. Transport to and from the world of shinobi on a single occasion by request, non-interference in the lives of the people you care for, and an end to my involvement with Uchiha Sasuke once Great Red has been defeated."

Shoving his hands in the pockets of his navy-blue sweatpants, Naruto hunched his shoulders tight. "Yeah, I remember." He remembered being that innocent, thinking that he could just pop in to see his old buddies for a few days without any worry. He remembered being hopeful enough to believe that everything would work out fine without him, because he'd thought people would inherit his will.

Ophis narrowed her eyes, turning away from the moonflower garden so she could squarely meet the Gremory heir's gaze. "Because of the shinobi, the first part of our agreement was pre-empted. Further, I had to bind myself not only to you but also to Rias Gremory and Himejima Akeno to enable them to pretend you remained here. This could be seen as interference from a certain point of view. It seemed preferable to renegotiate rather than ignore the circumstances and hope you'd uphold your end of the bargain."

In that moment Ophis proved that while she'd selected Naruto as a possible tool, she'd never bothered to understand him. If she had, she'd have known that his sense of fair play would compel him to uphold the agreement either way. Even after the nightmare of fighting for Konoha again, he'd assumed they'd be allies of a sort. But if she was offering a better deal, Naruto was smart enough to accept it.

"Alright then. Let's assume that the last bit is still in force. Sasuke isn't your slave. In fact, none of us are. Once your business with Great Red is solved that'll be the end of it. We don't have to fight for you or do anything else you ask." Naruto suggested quickly, combing his crimson hair out of his eyes and thinking desperately. What else did he even want out of the Ouroboros Dragon beyond her fucking right off and not messing around in their lives?

"Very well."

Staring down at the frigid-faced lolita, Naruto grinned weakly. Independence was once thing, but even that wasn't a sure bet. He wasn't naïve enough to think that Ophis would never under any circumstances lean on them outside of their original deal. So with that in mind, he decided he'd best get everything out of her that he could. "The second condition then is that I expect you to support me. I want to change this country. I'm not asking you to get down in the mud and sweat like a pig, but a few minutes here and there should be doable."

Ophis tilted her head slowly to the side, weighing the redhead with her sharp alien stare. "Do you intend to conquer Gehenna? I would not oppose that, but if you were doing so it would be much easier for you to do so as part of my Khaos Brigade."

Grimacing at that, Naruto shook his head. "Thanks, but no thanks. I'm sure your army is great, but I'm asking to be your ally, not your underling. Mutual support between us and the Brigade would work, as long as you understand we're not part of it."

"That is acceptable."

Naruto swallowed dryly, throwing a look over his shoulder at the dark manor he knew contained his closest friends and family. "And if I die, I want you to do call all your deals with Sasuke and the rest off, if you have them. I'll fight for you. I'll kill for you. I'll even die for you. But only if you can promise that the people I love will be protected, and that they won't be expected to fight a war for you."

For the first time Ophis hesitated. The first condition was simple enough, since she would have no use for pawns once the war was won and Great Red destroyed. Even the second condition was relatively easy to deal with, since the mere mention of her name could strike fear into the hearts of many. Confirming she supported Naruto would stabilize any conquest of Gehenna he made, while adding the devils de facto to her Khaos Brigade, even if they were de jure independent.

But Naruto Gremory's last condition was almost damning. The man was a reckless brawler, and it wouldn't be a surprise at all if he managed to get himself killed in one war or another before Great Red was destroyed. Giving up not only Uchiha Sasuke but the rest of Naruto's or Rias' peerages as pawns could actually set her back a few decades.

Was putting a leash on Naruto Gremory – the man who had changed the world of shinobi twice over worth that kind of gamble?

"I will accept your terms, as long as you agree in return that you will render me honest and unwavering service."

Smirking, Naruto wordlessly held out his hand. Call it old fashioned of him, but he expected that any honest deal would be concluded with a handshake. It took a few moments of Ophis goggling in confusion for her to clue in, but eventually the immortal sealed their deal with a firm shake.

"That's that then."

"For now."

Rather than endure further pointless niceties or waste time standing silently, Ophis vanished in a spark of black unlight.

Naruto glared at the empty space that the tiny goddess had once occupied, rolling his eyes at the arrogance of immortals before pivoting on the spot and trekking back up towards the manor. It was getting a bit chilly outside, and if he was done playing around with an eldritch abomination he had better things to do.

Like hunting down a certain errant fiancé.

Or at least, that was what Naruto thought. Maybe in a different world he would have spent another few hours running down Ravel and sternly lecturing into her the vices of cowardice. But in this one he came face to face with the young blonde girl as soon as he slipped in the side-door, his inspirational speech entirely forgotten.

"Umm."

"Well, err…"

"If I had to say, well, uhh…."

Shuffling awkwardly in place, Naruto clasped his hands behind his back and searched for _something_ to say. He might be passionate and impulsive, but he wasn't an ignorant retard. He knew exactly how Ravel felt about him, and how Valerie felt about him, and how he couldn't respond to one over the other without making the third wheel feel left out.

"Ravel, I…"

"Shut up." Ravel closed her eyes and sucked in a desperate breath, holding up her palm in the universal stop sign, demanding from her fiancé at least a single silent moment. "Just give me a minute. Just, _shut the fuck up_." Maybe it was the naked desperation in her voice, or maybe it was just the shock of the prim and proper Phenex princess cursing, but either way silence reigned.

Ravel was in no way dressed for confrontation. She'd slipped into a baggy set of gray sweatpants, tying her hair up into a lazy ponytail and plodding around the mansion barefoot. If she'd wanted to hide in some tiny closet with a bucket of ice cream no one would bat an eyelash, but her sloppy appearance would make her grandfather die of an aneurysm. The blonde was better suited for the bath than she was for the buffet.

In the end though, it didn't make her any less regal when Ravel straightened her spine to steel and glared up at the redhead that she'd been sold to for the sake of a political alliance. "I know you Naruto, so I know that right now you feel like you need to give me a stupid apology hoping that I'll forgive you for your mistakes."

The unyielding cold fire of Ravel's sapphire stare was enough to unnerve a lesser man. If the blonde set that glower on her servants or even her own brother it would explain perfectly why they all jumped to keep her satisfied. "I _don't_ forgive you."

Naruto half-expected the rejection, but that didn't prevent him from wanting to fold in half with guilt. It made perfect sense after all. Ravel had given him her love without reservation for years, only for him to piss all over it by running around with Valerie. If she turned her back on him now it was only just desserts.

"I don't forgive you, because there is nothing to forgive." Ravel bit out, clenching one hand in the faded pink cotton of her hoodie like she could steal strength from it. "Maybe you're projecting your human sensibilities on Gehenna, but whatever you've done or haven't done is exactly what I was raised to expect from my husband."

Sparks sputtered and flared when Ravel exhaled, glittering a blinding orange in the night as they flowed out from her lungs. Those sparks scattered and died once the blond lunged, plunging the pair into stifling darkness as she cupped Naruto's jaw with bruising force. "I don't care who you stick your fucking dick into."

The sharp edges of Ravel's nails cut mercilessly into Naruto's skin, but he was too spellbound to pull back and reject the pain.

"But you had better understand that I'll take no less than _her_." Then Ravel slammed her mouth onto his, inexperienced and clumsy. There was no romance in the kiss, only the heat of anger and the copper taste of Naruto's own blood when she nipped at the flesh of his lips. "And if you think you can play me I'll burn you to ashes. Starting with your balls, and ending with your brains."


	19. Chapter 19

Stretching his arms over his head until he heard the joints of his elbows pop, Zeoticus yawned. "Glad to see you're ready to go."

Naruto snorted at the way his grandfather slurred all his words together. The man's tongue lolled out like a giant lazy cat's. "Not that I'm scared or anything, but do I really have to go? I'm sure you can run your own show, can't you?"

"Look, just think of it this way." Zeoticus sighed, throwing a heavy arm around his grandson's shoulders. "Before you clinch the deal you've gotta _clinch the deal_ , you know what I'm saying?"

" _No_!"

Laughing at Naruto's irritated confusion, Zeoticus swanned away towards the teleportation circle. "Well come on then, we've got a train to catch and I'd like to keep my body in one piece. You know how your mother can get about tardiness."

"Now _that_ I understand." Naruto shivered, giving his white cravat a last nervous smoothing out before following the taller redhead into the faintly glowing runic array. "And if we miss it, let's just pretend we made it and catch the next one, yeah? No harm, no foul."

"Righto." There was a certain gentlemen's agreement between the males of the Gremory clan. They all understood that the fewer screw-ups that happened, the less punishment that Grayfia would inflict on them. So if something _did_ happen, well maybe it was better to sweep it under the rug. What Grayfia didn't know wouldn't hurt her. "All aboard."

Zeoticus still felt the phantom burning on his scalp from that one time he'd slept through a diplomatic meeting with the Sitri clan only to wake up with his daughter-in-law setting his hair on fire.

"It's just us you geezer."

Blinking away crocodile tears, Zeotiscus blubbered down at his heir. "Such cruel words from my beloved grandson." Then before Naruto could send a sarcastic barb back, the Duke reached out with his magic and shoved them sideways through dimensions.

The view of Starling Hall's foyer popped away like a soap bubble, plunging them into darkness before an absolutely crowded train station faded into view.

Steadying Naruto with a hand between the shoulderblades, Zeoticus narrowed his ice blue eyes and swept them across the platform. There was no trace of the goofy grandfather in his face then, only the disinterested Duke of Gremory who seemed to be looking down at the commoners as he and his heir shuffled through the crowd.

While he was sure that word had gotten around that he had been speaking with Yasaka, Zeoticus would rather at least _try_ to maintain some plausible deniability. And it was much less suspicious for a grandfather to take his grandson to the human world by train than it was to take the backroads paths between dimensions.

A public trip implied they had nothing to hide after all.

Zeoticus led Naruto into a private car about two thirds of the way down the train, wordlessly flicking his fingers and locking all the doors with an offhand cantrip. "If there is one single benefit to being obscenely rich, it's that even the public transport is private. I think I would kill myself if I had to ride coach."

"And to think you bill yourself as a man of the people." Naruto laughed, plopping down in the nearest window seat and staring out over the milling crowds. "Five minutes to go, yeah?"

The Duke just shrugged and slipped into the bench in front of his grandson's open compartment, throwing his legs up over the seat so he could lean his back against the glass. "Me and every single politician that managed to hold power longer than a week, yes. Some degree of populism is always necessary."

"I suppose. But what happens when someone stands up and says you can't be all that popular if you're afraid to let the people vote about it?"

Zeoticus smiled without any trace of humor. "Well I guess first you try to convince him that democracy leads to anarchy, then you try to bribe him, and if that doesn't work then one day he appears in the local news as an unfortunate victim of armed robbery."

A cool chuckle bubbled out of Naruto's lips, but he didn't dispute the statement like he might have a few months ago. It was that more than anything that convinced Zeoticus that something had changed. Sure, for the last couple of months the few times he'd seen the boy something had seemed a little off, but he hadn't dug too deeply into what was probably teenage angst.

Silence hung between them, heavy and a bit tense as the two redheads waited for the train to begin moving. Once the whistle blew and the wheels started creaking, Zeoticus settled a penetrating stare on his grandson. "You've seemed a bit morose lately, kiddo. Do you have something you'd like to get off your chest?"

The veiled accusation seemed to hit home like an arrow to the heart, making Naruto hunch his shoulders together a bit defensively and stare out the window with blank blue eyes. "I've just got a couple of things on my mind, yeah?"

"Yeah?"

A spark of _something_ flared in Naruto's gaze, and he quirked his mouth into a crooked smirk. "Well there's been a bit, of how do I say it, _this_ and _that_ back at home." A pink flush settled over the younger man's cheekbones. "I mean, you know, there's Ravel. But now there's Valerie, and well that, umm… yeah."

Zeoticus cocked an amused eyebrow, feeling the muscles around his mouth twitch with the repressed urge to grin like a loon. "Girl troubles is it?" Maybe it was a bit sadistic of him to take such pleasure from the boy's suffering, but really, his grandson had no idea how bad things were going to get.

Oh, to see the look on his face in five years or so!

"Well let me tell you kiddo, I had a bit of those kinds of problems myself back before I met your grandmother. Now, speaking from one man to another, there's a few things you should keep in mind about girls."

Naruto just covered his ears and groaned like a man set up for execution.

* * *

"Good afternoon, Lady Rias." Chorused simultaneously from the throats of a dozen mahou shoujo cosplaying maids, and Sasuke fought back the urge to shiver. Never let it be said that Serafall Leviathan was anything approaching _normal_.

Following two steps behind Rias like a proper and well-trained servant was supposed to, Sasuke kept his dark eyes on the redhead's back.

In truth he probably should have come alone since his King wasn't an officially sanctioned member of the conspiracy between Naruto, Sairaorg, and Sona Sitri, but it was much less suspicious for Rias to be visiting Sona than Sasuke by himself. Not to mention it killed several birds with one stone.

First, it would cement Naruto's newly seized control over the conspiracy since he was inviting people without even informing Sairaorg and Sona beforehand. Second, it officially brought Rias into the circle. And thirdly – the surface rationale for the visit in the first place – he could tell Sona about the _refinement_ in their political aspirations.

Rias led the way up the stairs to the library with the surety that came with knowing Sona her entire life, only to walk right past the doorway once they actually made it there. "The door is closed, so she's not in there." She explained to her Pawn before he could question her.

"I see." Sasuke hummed, frowning as they climbed back down a different stairwell, winding their way through the halls with seemingly random turns.

A quarter of the way down the seventh hallway, Rias stopped abruptly and settled her hand on an innocent looking set of pure white double doors. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." She muttered lowly. Then she pushed the doors open.

"Ah! I wasn't expecting you today, Rias, but it's fortuitous for you to come visit. Come, take a seat."

With the grimly determined expression of a woman doomed to be hung, Rias slumped over to sit down on one of the high stools that Sona motioned out.

Sasuke for his part only felt an enormous sense of foreboding as he entered the spacious kitchen. Nothing _seemed_ to pop out at him as wrong. Stainless steel kitchen appliances glittered here and there, clean and new and obnoxiously expensive. The countertops were made of smooth black marble, and there wasn't a single stain on the kitchen island that Rias was resting her elbows on. Even Sona Sitri herself was smartly dressed in a freshly pressed chef's uniform.

"Sitri." Sasuke acknowledged as he crossed the room, finding his own chair and leaving a single one between his and Rias' seats. It was the strictly polite thing for a male servant with a female master to do, and while Sona was part of their group he didn't consider his personal life something she needed to know about.

Sona nodded back before returning to kneading the ball of light brown cookie dough that she had her hands buried in. "What brings you here then?" she asked, short and to the point while adding another dash of baking powder to the bowl.

"We thought it best to tell you there's been a change of plans in regards to our little association."

A very slow deliberate blink was the only reaction Sona gave to Rias' response, the bespectacled girl never even missing a beat as she squeezed out the cookie dough onto a long pan before sliding the entire tray into the oven. There was no trace of surprise or anxiety in her face, which made Sasuke suspect she was further ahead of the curve than he'd thought.

In hindsight, it would be a bit dumb on Sona's part to not expect Naruto to blab about their goals to all the peers he trusted. The Gremory heir was constitutionally incapable of going it alone.

"What sort of change?" Sona prodded, washing her hands in the nearest sink with mechanical motions. "And will Sairaorg be made aware of these… changes?" Every word was carefully measured with just the right amount of detachment, but underneath the suspicion shone through.

Rias furrowed her eyebrows in thought, but before she could formulate a properly politic answer Sasuke cut in boldly.

"Think less of 'the Senate of the people' and more 'hail Caesar'." The Pawn pointed out dryly, smirking on the inside at the irritated _twitch_ Rias made. "Sorry for stealing your thunder, Little Red."

The sarcastic barb pulled a short laugh out of Sona's throat, and when she turned back to face them head on there was only exasperated amusement in her violet gaze. "I see you're still struggling to control your servants, Rias. I assume Akeno is as feisty as ever?"

Puffing out her cheeks in a pout, Rias glared at the other two. The glint in her eyes promised painful and embarrassing revenge in the near future.

"Regardless." Sona sobered back into distant disinterest, slipping on a pair of oven mitts and pulling the tray of golden brown cookies out of the oven. "That's fine. As long as the state is efficient and forward-thinking, I am not really concerned with the exact mechanics of governance."

Well that was convenient, Sasuke suppose, watching the Sitri heiress shuffle the chocolate chip cookies one by one from the tray to a large porcelain plate. Of the original three conspirators, he'd always pegged Sona as the most pragmatic, more concerned with pet projects than with overarching questions of ethics. But even if she was the most coldly rational out of the three, he'd expected a little more resistance.

It was probably best for Sasuke to keep an eye on Sona for a while, just in case.

"Would you like to try one?"

Deciding not to make waves where he didn't have to, Sasuke accepted a single biscuit from Sona, not noticing the frantic gestures Rias was making until he'd bit down.

It was…

This…

The flavor…

Sasuke chewed slowly and swallowed, looking down at the discreet half-moon his teeth had left behind in the freshly cooked dough. "This is not bad, actually." Then he took another bite.

Something like pure horror rippled across Rias' face. "What manner of creature are you?"

* * *

Yasaka scanned over the slightly crumbled note in her hand. Most of the list was written in shorthand and vague references, just clear enough for her to understand what it meant without overtly declaring the intent to acquire a dozen different types of youjutsu artifacts.

Sighing expansively in the cultivated way that she knew drew eyes to her generous cleavage, the ruler of Kyoto shifted her gaze to her last but most important supplicant of the day. "I've indulged you for long enough, Duke. But I believe it's long past time you give me a proper explanation." She fluttered the note Zeoticus had given her in emphasis.

"I didn't think it was something that needed an explanation, in truth." Zeoticus murmured, staring intently over at the veranda where his grandson and Yasaka's daughter were awkwardly sitting together while the servants bustled around serving the children tea. "Doesn't everyone in politics seek the occasional alliance?"

Irritated at the deflection, Yasaka decided to cut through to the heart of the matter. Zeoticus was just another man who thought he was cleverer than he actually was. As if she couldn't see his transparent attempts to matchmake their heirs and reduce her only daughter to a concubine. Kunou might only be nine years old, but opportunists had been seeking her hand before the girl had even been born.

"There is a difference between a mutual defense pact and what is very obviously an attempt to create a stockpile of weapons from another pantheon. Do you take me for a complete fool? Between requesting _thirty thousand_ infused omamori and that nonsense about you buying up all the land in Kuoh questions need to be asked."

Amber light burned in Yasaka's eyes with the promise of blood and violence, and there was naked steel in her tongue. When she spoke it wasn't a request but a demand. "I asked you before and I'll ask you again, are you trying to take over this country?"

It seemed her simmering anger was enough to get a reply, since Zeoticus finally stopped watching the children with that proprietary greed to focus on her instead. There was no lust in him, which Yasaka disliked because it deprived her of a possible weapon, leaving only that distant conceit that every devil seemed to carry with them like a second heart.

"After the conquest of Mictlan and the emigration of the fallen angels, we have Gehenna to ourselves. We've nearly doubled our territory in the space of a couple of years. Trying to expand further would just be dangerous when we already have an excess of living space. Overextension leads to collapse. So _no,_ I'm not trying to take over this country."

"Then _what_ is it? I'm not going to be party to unknown motives and unknown goals."

Zeoticus hummed lowly in thought, bracing his elbows on the table as he learned forward. It took only a heartbeat for him to age from arrogant aristocrat to fatigued family man, startling Yasaka with the sheer swiftness of it. "What does any man want?" he questioned rhetorically. "I want peace in my time, a strong and prosperous clan, and for my children to never suffer through the bloodshed I had to go through as a boy."

Which was a nice sentiment Yasaka acknowledged, but his deeds didn't match his words. "I wouldn't call building alliances that benefit your clan above the rest and stockpiling war material to be pacifistic." She noted blandly.

The smirk that twisted the devil's mouth was full of vindictive bitterness. "He who wants peace must prepare for war. Speak softly and carry a big stick. It's just realpolitik. I'm not naïve enough to think that civil conflict or another external invasion won't ever occur, but I might be able to make a few people think twice about it."

"Or you might trigger an arms race that creates that very war you're trying to prevent." The kitsune countered immediately, shaking her head and turning away from Zeoticus to think. Any kind of war that involved Gehenna could spread to encompass the entire Biblical Pantheon, and despite the causalities of the Great War they'd proven to still be disproportionately powerful compared to everyone else.

If she allowed Kyoto to become affiliated with the Gremory clan, then her little fiefdom could be drawn into a devil conflict. And considering her influence ended just outside the Kansai region she didn't exactly have spare resources to throw away at another Great War.

That said, Yasaka wasn't blind. Like any other ruler she understood the value of courage and ambition. And she could benefit from breaking orthodoxy and dealing with the devils. "Fine." She declared decisively, snapping open her pocket fan and cooling herself with a small breeze. "We can do business, as long as we come to a certain understanding."

"I'm listening."

Pointing her fan at the young redhead on the terrace, she shook her head. "First of all, _this_ isn't going to be happening. I have one heir, who will rule after me. She's not going to be bartered off as some devil lordling's fifth wife or whatever nonsense you're after."

"Second." Yasaka continued without giving the Duke a chance to disagree. "I don't want you to make any assumptions about the nature of their relationship. Informally we might have a private understanding but the policy of Kyoto will be neutrality. I won't turn away the House of Naberius or anyone else if they want to make a deal with me. At most you can expect a favour here and there from me."

Zeoticus' knuckles whitened, but it was the only physical expression of his displeasure with her diktats. Quite frankly Yasaka didn't care. Her interests lay in the prosperity of Kyoto, not in that of the Gremory clan. "Thirdly, any and all exchanges are going to be as discreet as possible. The later people find out that we're trading, the better for both of us. As long as the secret is kept I am not collaborating with foreigners and you are not a warmonger."

She knew it was a great deal less than what he'd come for, but she was confident that Zeoticus was smart enough to cut his losses and agree.

Which he did.


	20. Chapter 20

Valerie frowned at her image in the mirror, tying up her long blonde locks into a rough ponytail that left her bangs flying free. Did Naruto prefer the groomed look, or did he like it best when everything was purely natural? The dhampir hummed low in her throat, considering.

Eventually Valerie settled on leaving her hair up, spraying jasmine perfume on the hollow of her throat and the insides of her wrist. Maybe he'd like it better that way, or maybe he wouldn't. There was only one way to find out.

Combined with the dark blue jeans slung low on her hips and the loose purple chemise that showed off her cleavage, Valerie gave off a 'ready to be fucked' air.

Or at least she hoped. She didn't have a whole lot of experience, but she knew that Naruto was going to be her one and only. Her love was too kind and shy to pursue her, but Valerie knew she was ready, so the only thing left to do was pursue him.

Combing through her bangs one last time, Valerie turned away from the mirror and crossed over to the door. "Slow and steady. Don't try to rush him." She reminded herself shakily, taking a steadying breath before turning the handle and sliding the door open.

Standing on the other side and looking distinctly unimpressed was Ravel Phenex. "Hello." Naruto's only _official_ fiancé said coolly. "Do you mind if I come in?" Then without bothering to wait for Valerie's reply she shoved on past, jamming an elbow into Valerie's ribs.

"Can I _help_ you?" Valerie questioned acidly, shutting the door and spinning so she could watch the intruder with a frigid ruby glare. They'd always been distantly polite, but since the return from Konoha Valerie found the other blonde almost unbearable in her hostility.

A hostility Valerie returned.

"I have a busy day ahead, so I don't have a lot of time to socialize."

Ravel didn't speak, her shoulders clenched tight as she inspected Valerie's bedroom with the arrogance of a girl born to be queen. Those azure orbs traced here and there, memorizing and judging in a way that set Valerie's teeth on edge.

If they didn't both have to answer to Naruto, Valerie would expect violence and blood. But since they both loved the same man who loved them back, things were a little more complicated.

"I thought it best that we have a bit of a chat. Nothing _dramatic_. Just to clear the air." Ravel eventually responded, turning on her heel and folding her arms over her chest. Between the brand new pink dress and the carefully shaped drill twintails the girl was every inch a noble.

To another woman it would be intimidating. But for Valerie it was just another hurdle of pride that she had to jump over to prove she had just as much a right to be here as Ravel did.

Hooking her thumbs in the belt loops of her jeans, Valerie clenched her jaw. She was confident, but she wasn't _blind_. Valerie knew that Naruto _wanted_ her, but lust wasn't a concrete thing. Her love might decide to cut his losses if Valerie couldn't come to some kind of agreement with Ravel. The Phenex girl was younger, but Ravel was also much more politically valuable.

If someone was going to be thrown overboard, it would probably be her.

"That sounds like a wonderful idea." Valerie smiled, all false cheer and pretended naivety. "I know that Naruto has been needing an escort for a lot of state functions, but maybe between the two of us we could trade off? I hate for people to think he was less of a man, and we know how this country is."

Ravel laughed, sharp-edged and hateful. "Let's not beat around the bush. I'm sure we could play politics all day long with each other, but I think the end result would be unsatisfying and indecisive." She waved her hand dismissively, the long tips of her fingernails glinting. "No, brutal honesty is the best policy here, I think."

That was a bit different than the last time they'd spoken privately, when they'd both been so carefully polite, pretending like they wanted to be friends. Folding her arms over her chest, Valerie leaned her back against the door and measured Ravel with a considering scarlet stare. "I'm listening."

Rather than sneer again Ravel forced all the tension from her face, creating a façade of porcelain stillness.

It was that willingness to strive for civility that convinced Valerie to put away her own defensive barbs, meeting Ravel's gesture with a doll-like front of her own.

"Neither of us are stupid or blind, so I think we both know what the root of our conflict is." Ravel began lowly, letting Naruto's name float silently between them. They were both jealous of the other and exploring that envy would just lead to flared tempers and further enmity. "And that given nothing can really be done to change it without hurting him and making him choose, we should try to come to a real detente."

If Valerie was honest, she could sympathize with Ravel. She herself could taste the acid burn of possessive envy on the back of her tongue. The other blonde probably felt the exact same way.

In an ideal world Valerie would be the only woman that Naruto loved. The only one that brought him joy. The one who would make sure that her savior was cared for as he deserved to be.

But she didn't live in an ideal world, she lived in the real one. And in the real world Naruto would have to take several wives, for political benefits and safety if nothing else. That was the way of Gehenna. So perhaps she ought to bite the bullet and accept that maximizing Naruto's happiness demanded harmony between the various women in his life.

Her King mattered more than her desires did.

"I won't lie and say I'm perfectly alright with sharing. You wouldn't believe me if I did." Valerie eventually sighed, letting her arms drop to a less guarded position. "But if Naruto is happy that's the only thing I care about. As long as he wants you around, I won't get in your way or try to sabotage you."

Ravel pursed her lips like she was sucking on a lemon, looking angry and resigned in equal measure. As much as she wanted to be instinctively selfish and demand monogamy, Ravel was even more aware of the nature of the country they lived in. She had been prepared for it in a way that Valerie hadn't been.

So instead of tearing a strip off someone she still felt was an interloper, she wordlessly held out her hand to shake on it.

In the end they didn't have to like each other, they just had to tolerate one another.

* * *

"Hey coz." Naruto greeted breezily as he stepped through the teleportation circle, shaking the dirt off his boots with carefree grace and grinning at Kuisha's scandalized expression. Under the mask of cheer he was knotted up with anxiety, but he had a role to play.

Sona had always been a bit ambivalent about truly egalitarian government, but Sairaorg was the real deal. If he wanted to bring the man over to his side he needed to be slow, personable, and very careful. The Bael heir would never tattle on Naruto because of mutually assured destruction, but he could be a pretty deadly enemy if he decided to be.

Sairaorg waved a greeting, not looking up from the boxing match he had blaring on the TV. "Just give me a minute. They're in the last round."

Shrugging at his cousin's obsession with the world of professional sports, Naruto plodded around the luxurious den, poking curiously at the collection of signed merchandise and posters that clung to the walls. He could feel Kuisha's eyes on his back, and he hoped she'd take off so he could talk to Sairaorg in private.

He had nothing against the leggy blonde, but the Queen worshipped the ground Sairaorg walked on. If Naruto brought up taking formal control over their conspiracy with her in the room, she'd probably flip out and do everything she could to convince Sairaorg to cling to power. He could admire that kind of loyalty, but damn if it didn't make his life more difficult.

"Woo!" Sairaorg howled in victory, startling the redhead and making him glare at the older devil's back. "Get knocked on your ass, boy."

A few more minutes passed, during which Naruto waited irritably as Sairaorg crowed in victory. "Go ahead, make my ears bleed." He muttered lowly, perking up when he saw Kuisha roll her eyes at the display and flee the room.

Once Sairaorg began to do a little victory dance, Naruto decided enough was enough. The Gremory heir lunged across the room, jamming his thumb into the power button and cutting off the live feed.

"Hey, I was watching that!"

"It wasn't even a championship round! And if you want to see the post-match commentary so badly just watch the rerun after I leave. Blood and ashes."

Sighing explosively, Sairaorg ran a hand through his thick dark locks, mussing up his spike strands even more. "Fine, fine. What do you want, killjoy?" he demanded, sinking back into the couch with a squeak of leather, throwing his arms up over the backrest.

Naruto smirked, sitting his ass down on the coffee table so his cousin couldn't prop his feet up. It put them almost knee to knee, but it was worth it to needle at the other devil. He'd missed being able to take the piss out of Sairaorg, what with the man's descent into alcoholic depression during the Mictlan war.

But it'd been months and months since he'd last actually seen Sairaorg. Months during which the Bael heir had managed to climb back up in the saddle. Naruto was glad to see it, even if this revitalized cousin of his would be less willing to cede power than the depressed drunk would have been.

"Ah, well." Naruto let his smile turn sheepish, wondering darkly if his entire life was going to be like _this_ from now on. Just lying and manipulating people he'd once promised to be honest to. "I was just… Sona and I got to talking and we're a bit worried about you."

"Worried." That one word was said so blandly that Naruto winced. He'd expected Sairaorg to be a bit offended over the implied judgement. Sona had even predicted it, when he'd gone to speak to her about his worries that Sairaorg would be less than receptive to the change in their little movement's end goals.

Still, Naruto had to push on through. It would be the work of months to bring Sairaorg around to his way of thinking, and even then he probably couldn't be as candid as he'd like to be about his new pragmatic viewpoint.

But if Sairaorg would be willing to give up the helm without a fuss then Naruto would count it as a victory for today. Everything else could come later.

Visibly steeling himself, Naruto thinned his lips and set his elbows on his knees, blue eyes piercing as he stared down his cousin's violet gaze. "Yeah, we were _worried_ about you. You're doing better now, but you weren't doing so hot a few months back. Doing what you had to do; we saw you took it pretty hard. Harder than I did even."

"I didn't think that having a sense of morality was such a bad thing." Sairaorg shot back, a touch of accusation in his voice as his eyebrows lowered into a tight glower. "In fact, I'd say that it's what sets us apart from _them_."

Holding up his hands in a placating gesture, Naruto pulled back a bit. "You're not wrong. It's important to have those feelings. And we're not trying to close you out. But Sona and I are worried – what if something happens later on and brings you out of commission again? It's not a big deal to take some time now, but what if shit's hitting the fan? We'd all be running around with our heads cut off."

"So because you think that I might have a breakdown in a crisis that I should let someone else run the show."

"I wouldn't put it quite like that…"

"Yeah, sure. If that's what you guys think is best then fine, whatever."

"I – what?" Naruto blinked in complete shock, his eyebrows practically climbing to his forehead as Sairaorg just shrugged and tugged at the collar of his black t-shirt.

"What did you think I was going to say?" The older devil questioned wryly, smirking a bit. "'No fuck you there's no breaks on this train'? I didn't ask you to help me because I had some obsessive need for control and personal power. I just want a better Gehenna. It's not really about _me_. So if everyone else thinks maybe we need a new leader, I have no problem stepping aside."

Poking at the inside of his cheek with the tip of his tongue, Naruto shook his head and then chuckled. "You're really something else, you know that?"

Maybe he'd underestimated Sairaorg's pride, or maybe he'd just been assuming the other man was just like him. Naruto would have hated to give up power. He'd wanted to protect people, but he'd also wanted to lead them. It was a vanity that had held onto him since his first childhood, and he'd thought Sairaorg would be the same way.

Maybe he didn't understand Sairaorg at all, which was convenient - _this_ time. Naruto doubted it always would be.

Maybe he should start keeping an eye on his favorite cousin.

Just in case.

* * *

"She's kind of got me by the balls, you know? So if Sona wants to go to Kuoh next spring, we're just gonna have to make it happen."

"I hardly think she's _that_ unreasonable."

Koneko slowly chewed on a stick of pocky, distantly registering the sweet taste of chocolate that hit her tongue while she idly watched Naruto and Rias haggle things out. She'd never really wanted to spend three years getting the so-called 'high school experience' in the first place, so it made no difference to her whether she had to attend next year or in a couple of years.

As far as the nekomata was concerned, Sona Sitri had spoken. A bribe for a favour. They would all enroll as first year students together at Kuoh Academy next April and suffer through three years playing human. In exchange the Sitri heiress would take a hands-off approach to Sairaorg Bael and the problem of leadership in the conspiracy.

"And you didn't try to convince her otherwise? You _know_ it'll look suspicious if we keep changing our minds about when we're attending the academy."

"Lucifer's saggy nuts woman, it's not that big of a deal! My dad will just think we're kids being kids about it. Everyone knows that teenagers are impulsive as fuck. Puberty is a bitch. They're not going to look twice at us over it."

Tuning out the bickering of the two redheads, Koneko drew her knees up to her chest and rolled to the side to rest her head on the arm of the coach. Her bare feet were plopped in Sasuke's lap, daring him to complain or try to tickle them.

Sasuke did neither, cracking open one of his eyelids to give her a side glance before retreating into his light doze, his head lolling on the couch's backrest. It was such a lazy gesture that the Rook nearly jumped in shock when Sasuke suddenly grabbed both her feet in one warm hand.

"Stay still." He muttered, holding her feet in place.

Koneko briefly considered kicking at him just for laughs but thought better of it. She was too warm and comfortable to want to rock the boat. So instead she slid one arm under her head as padding and returned to watching aunt and nephew argue like five-year olds.

"It seems plain to me that _someone_ here has all the intellect of an autistic child!"

"You shouldn't talk about yourself that way, _Auntie_."

"I hope you realize that you've chosen to marry into this family." The white-haired girl nettled dryly, her amber eyes narrowed to relaxed slits. "Nine-thousand nine-hundred and seventy-some years of this to go."

Sasuke barked a quiet laugh, prodding at the sole of Koneko's foot with a warning thumb. "I think _choice_ is a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it? You _know_ Naruto – I never had a snowball's chance in hell. If Rias hadn't snatched me up he would have torn Gehenna apart looking for me."

"Seeing as how we both know from personal experience that a snowball can actually last indefinitely in hell, I think you'd be better off picking another metaphor."

"I suppose." Sasuke allowed, falling silent once more. He probably could have spoken up at any time to play peacemaker between Naruto and Rias, but he seemed happy to just bask in the byplay. It was a calm eddy of pure normality after the storm of war and violence that Konoha had been.

Koneko didn't blame him, because even if the crabby clash was giving her a headache she preferred it too. Konoha had cast long shadows over all of them, Naruto the most and Koneko the least. To see Naruto finding a bit of his old self made it seem like everything was going to be alright.

At some point Sasuke's thumb stopped poking and switched to slow massaging circles, sending faint sparks of pleasure tingling up her calves. Koneko supposed that she should do something about it, before Naruto looked over and got one of his stupid ideas.

But it felt too nice to complain about.

Snuggling into the sun-basked warmth of the couch cushions, Koneko let her eyelids flutter shut. With the familiar note of Rias' voice cracking through the air and the steady presence of Sasuke's hands on her feet, she was exactly where she wanted to be.


End file.
